V 


o>   , — ^^ »» f-«> — »  ^ 

*  DEC  28 1907   * 


BV  4915  .C33  1903 
Cantwell,  E.  N.  1869- 
Personal  salvation 


Personal  Salvation 


A  Treatment  cf  the   Doctrines  of 

Conversion  and   Christian 

Experience 


Edward  N.  Cantwell,  B.D. 


New  York:  EATON  &  MAINS 
Cincinnati:  JENNINGS  &   PYE 


€aton  &  ilaine 

X0O3 


This  Book  is  Dedicated 

TO    A 

Methodist  Ancestry 

THAT  FOR 

Five  Generations  has  Enjoyed  the  Power 

AND 

Upheld  the  Doctrines 

OF 

Personal  Salvation 


CONTENTS 


Page 

Preface 7 

I 
The  Christian 15 

II 

Preparation  for  Conversion 29 

III 
Human  Side  of  the  Preparation 32 

IV 

Spiritual  Enlightenment 43 

V 
Spiritual  Awakening 52 

VI 

Conviction  of  Sin 62 

VII 
The  Invitation 78 

VIII 
The  Hour  of  Decision 83 

IX 
Repentance 92 


6  Contents 

X  Page 

Faith 102 

XI 
Christian  Faith 116 

XII 
The  Righteous  Quality  of  Faith 125 

XIII 
Faith  and  the  Divine  Side  of  Conver- 
sion    130 

XIV 
Justification 140 

XV 
Regeneration 150 

XVI 
Adoption 169 

XVII 
Christian  Fellowship 176 

XVIII 
Christian  Assurance.  183 

XIX 

Christian  Holiness 195 

XX 

Rescued  for  Service 211 


PREFACE 


A  COMPREHENSIVE  grasp  of  truth  and  a 
strong  and  adequate  style  of  expression 
are  essential  features  of  a  helpful  book, 
but  the  one  great  content  that  gives  it  life 
and  inspiration  is  the  personality  of  the 
writer,  the  Some  one,  who  lives  on  every 
page,  whose  soul  beats  against  the  limita- 
tions of  language  as  an  eagle  beats  against 
the  bars  of  his  cage  in  vain  search  of  a  free 
pathway  to  the  open  hill  country  and  the 
shining  sun.  For  this  reason  every  really 
great  book  except  the  Bible  "seems  to  be  a 
vain  attempt  to  do  the  impossible."  The 
writer  of  this  book,  therefore,  will  be 
greatly  pleased  if  some  of  his  readers  find 
that  he  has  suggested  and  attempted  more 


8  Preface 

than  he  has  been  able  to  complete.  Books 
treating  of  Christian  experience  are  quite 
plentiful,  but  none  of  them  satisfy  any 
large  portion  of  the  Christian  Church. 
There  are  two  reasons  for  this :  ( i )  With- 
out the  direct  inspiration  of  God  a  man 
cannot  write  a  book  greater  than  himself, 
nor  can  he  give  clear  and  living  expression 
to  any  spiritual  truth  until  it  has  become  a 
vital  part  of  his  own  life.  No  one,  as  yet, 
has  been  able  to  realize  in  his  personal  re- 
ligious life  all  of  the  facts  of  Christian 
experience  expressed  or  implied  in  the 
Scriptures,  nor  can  any  one  man  know  all 
the  phases  of  experience  which  obtain 
among  the  various  members  of  the  great 
Christian  Brotherhood.  All  that  one 
Christian  can  do  is  to  put  his  own  experi- 
ence in  order  and  send  it  forth  as  a  per- 
sonal message  to  his  brethren.  (2)  But 
since  salvation  is  a  personal,  living  process 


Preface  9 

it  cannot,  for  that  very  reason,  be  put  into 
words.  The  scientist  can  describe  every 
Httle  detail  of  the  growth  of  a  plant,  but  he 
can  tell  nothing  of  the  living  power  which 
makes  the  growth.  The  effects  are  seen, 
the  cause  remains  a  great  mystery.  Hence 
the  weakness  of  all  treatment  of  Christian 
experience. 

Conscious  of  these  limitations,  the  writer 
still  hopes  that  this  book  does  give  some- 
what adequate  expression  to  a  common 
type  of  Christian  experience.  He  also 
hopes  that  by  means  of  it  some  may  be 
helped  to  a  better  understanding  of  the 
truth  and  of  themselves,  and  that  in- 
creased knowledge  may  lead  to  stronger 
and  deeper  spiritual  life.  To  obtain  a 
well-balanced  view  of  Methodist  teaching 
on  this  important  subject  there  may  be 
read  in  connection  with  this  book  four 
Methodist  classics,  written  by  men  of  ma- 


10  Preface 

ture  thought  and  experience,  namely, 
Love  Enthroned,  by  Dr.  Daniel  Steele; 
Aspects  of  Christian  Experience,  by  Bish- 
op S.  M.  Merrill ;  Philosophy  of  Christian 
Experience,  by  Bishop  Randolph  S.  Fos- 
ter; The  New  and  Living  Way,  by  Pro- 
fessor Milton  S.  Terry, 

Theological  definitions  are  at  present  in 
some  disfavor.  The  present  writer  be- 
lieves, however,  that  knowledge  and  belief 
precede  experience  and  character;  that 
definite  thinking  and  exact  knowledge  are 
necessary  to  definite  experience;  that  a 
vague,  loose,  indefinite  style  of  thought 
and  speech  is  degrading  and  immoral. 
The  names  of  the  events  of  Christian  ex- 
perience are  in  common  use,  and  yet  very 
few  have  any  clear  idea  of  their  meaning. 
Nor  is  this  ignorance  entirely  confined  to 
the  laity.  Very  many  writers  and  speakers 
use  statements  and  make  explanations  that 


Preface  11 

indicate  very  great  confusion  or  very  great 
error.  Figures  of  speech  have  been  so 
abused  that  their  use  has  added  to  the  con- 
fusion and  concealed  the  truth  instead  of 
reveahng  it.  Some  have  gone  so  far  as 
to  build  a  whole  system  of  doctrines  on  a 
metaphor.  Things  are  not  clearly  seen 
across  a  landscape  covered  with  fog; 
progress  under  such  conditions  is  slow, 
uncertain,  and  dangerous.  Believing  that 
definitions  will  help  to  clear  up  the  situa- 
tion, they  have  been  freely  used.  A  path- 
way through  the  forest  may  restrict  free- 
dom and  limit  the  view,  yet  it  is  an  aid  to 
most  travelers  who  desire  to  arrive  some- 
where. These  definitions  have  proven  so 
helpful  to  the  writer  in  his  own  experience 
and  have  added  so  much  to  the  value  of 
his  preaching  that  he  feels  it  both  a  duty 
and  a  pleasure  to  give  them  as  large  an 
audience  as  possible.    The  definitions  are, 


12  Preface 

however,  to  be  looked  upon  not  as  final 
statements  of  the  whole  truth,  but  as  defi- 
nite measures  of  the  light  we  now  have, 
and,  like  the  clear  outline  of  the  new 
moon,  a  prophecy  of  fuller  light  to  come. 
This  partial  but  clearly  defined  outline  is 
more  encouraging  to  the  ordinary  traveler 
than  the  greater  but  fragmentary  light  of 
the  great  nebula ;  it  is  nearer  by  and  more 
concentrated,  and  therefore  gives  greater 
promise  of  immediate  helpfulness,  even 
though  it  may  not  have  such  great  possi- 
bilities. We  will  do  the  best  we  can  with 
the  light  at  hand  while  waiting  for  the 
nebula  to  organize.  Indeed,  it  is  to  be 
hoped  that  some  mighty  spirit  may  soon 
move  upon  the  great  nebulous  mass  of 
much  that  passes  for  Christian  thinking 
and  reduce  to  order  that  formless  void. 
The  writer  hastens  to  say  that  these  defini- 
tions are  not  his  own,  but  that  wherever 


Preface  13 

they  appear  placed  in  quotation  marks  and 
not  otherwise  credited  they  are  by  Pro- 
fessor OHn  A.  Curtis,  to  whom  is  acknowl- 
edged a  very  great  indebtedness  for  the 
outline  of  conversion.  But  beyond  this 
outline  and  the  definitions  this  work  does 
not  pretend  to  give  any  of  Dr.  Curtis's 
views. 

The  claim  is  not  made  that  every  con- 
version must  exactly  fit  the  plan  here 
given,  or  even  that  many  conversions  will 
be  as  clear  and  definite  in  every  detail. 
The  writer  was  converted  when  eleven 
years  of  age,  and  he  is  very  sure  that  the 
repentance  and  faith  exercised  were  far 
below  the  demands  of  this  treatise.  But 
as  he  grew  older  and  obtained  a  clearer 
idea  of  his  personal  accountability,  and  a 
better  conception  of  God,  the  repentance 
and  faith  took  on  a  new  and  deeper  mean- 
ing, and  with  every  increase  of  knowledge 

2 


14  Preface 

and  new  apprehension  of  God  there  has 
come  a  new  and  better  adjustment  of  his 
whole  rehgious  experience.  Within  the 
past  year  a  study  of  the  minor  prophets 
has  given  a  great  and  new  content  to  his 
conception  of  God,  and  as  a  result  repent- 
ance and  faith  and  the  whole  range  of 
experience  have  taken  on  a  deeper  mean- 
ing. The  writer  speaks  of  personal  salva- 
tion as  he  now  knows  it.  This  personal 
element  may  account  for  the  persistent 
and  perhaps  over  urging  of  some  of  the 
points.  Some  readers  may  not  need  to 
trim  the  statements  to  their  experience, 
while  others  may  need  to  bring  their  ex- 
perience into  line  with  the  statements 
herein,  even  though  in  some  cases  they  be 
overurged. 

Holland's  Island,  Md., 
January,  1903. 


personal  ^albatton 


CHAPTER  I 

The  Christian 

The  words  "Christian"  and  "Chris- 
tianity" are  used  in  so  many  senses,  and 
so  generally  in  a  vague  and  indefinite 
way,  that  great  confusion  as  to  their  real 
meaning  has  resulted.  A  consultation  of 
encyclopedias  and  dictionaries  only  helps 
to  increase  the  confusion.  Some  years 
ago  a  Christian  weekly  sent  to  a  number 
of  representative  men  and  women  the  fol- 
lowing question :  '"What  is  it  to  be  a 
Christian?"  Some  thirty  replies  were  re- 
ceived. Bishop  Randolph  S.  Foster  says 
that  while  this  is  a  demand  for  a  defini- 
tion, yet  not  one  of  the  thirty  responses  is 
a  definition,  although  some  approximate 


16  Personal  Salvation 

it,  and  not  one  is  satisfactory.  The  con- 
fusion on  this  subject  has  been  greatly  in- 
creased by  such  books  as  The  Christian, 
by  Hall  Caine,  and  Robert  Elsmere,  by 
Mrs.  Ward,  and  by  the  rise  of  several 
societies  of  good  people  who  are  con- 
scientiously trying  to  practice  the  teach- 
ings of  Christ  but  who  have  missed  the 
vital  center  of  the  Christian  religion.  The 
words  under  discussion  ought  to  have  a 
precise  and  definite  meaning,  and  it  is 
our  present  task  to  find  out  what  that 
meaning  may  be.  If  the  fog  on  our 
horizon  can  be  driven  away  we  may  be 
able  to  run  a  straight  course  with  clear 
sailing. 

A  man  is  not  born  a  Christian,  but  he 
becomes  one  by  making  real  in  his  own 
life  the  Christian  religion.  Hence  it  is 
evident  that  we  must  define  Christianity 
before  we  can  define  the  Christian. 

We  have  not  touched  the  central  fact  of 
Christianity  when  we  think  of  it  as  a  new 
and  better  way  of  living,  nor  even  when 


The  Christian  17 

we  regard  it  as  the  fullest  and  completest 
revelation  of  God.  It  is  both  of  these,  but 
only  incidentally.  These  do  not  exhaust 
or  e\^en  truly  represent  those  parts  of  the 
New  Testament  upon  which  the  most  em- 
phasis is  placed.  We  must  go  deeper  for 
the  real  meaning  of  Christianity.  The 
real  truth  and  the  vital  message  of  the 
New  Testament  lie  here:  '^Mankind  is  a 
racial  brotherhood  of  moral  persons. 
Christianity  is  a  deed — it  is  God  in  action 
to  save  this  brotherhood  of  man;  a  deed 
of  infinite  sorrow  and  self-sacrifice  on  the 
part  of  God;  a  deed  made  absolutely  nec- 
essary by  the  entrance  of  sin,  which  has 
entered  the  personal  life  of  man  and 
broken  up  his  relation  with  the  Father, 
and  which  has  also  entered  man's  social 
life  and  broken  up  God's  original  plan  of 
brotherhood.  The  religion  of  Christianity 
is  an  actual  rescue  from  sin  of  a  personal 
moral  brotherhood,  at  infinite  cost  in  self- 
sacrifice  on  the  part  of  God."  With  this 
adequate    and    comprehensive    definition 


18  Personal  Salvation 

of  Christianity  clearly  before  us  we  can 
suggest  a  definition  for  the  term  "Chris- 
tian" that  will  be  sufficiently  inclusive  and 
exclusive. 

A  Christian  is  a  man  whose  religious 
life  is  marked  by  three  definite  character- 
istics :  ( I )  A  definite  belief  in  the  atone- 
ment as  an  act  of  rescue  performed  by 
Jesus  Christ,  the  Son  of  God,  with  a  belief 
in  the  doctrines  growing  out  of  the  atone- 
ment; (2)  a  definite  act  of  faith  by 
which  the  atonement  in  Christ  is  appro- 
priated as  a  personal  rescue,  and  a  definite 
experience  of  acceptance  with  God,  in- 
cluding freedom  from  sin  and  birth  into 
the  family  of  God,  with  conscious  knowl- 
edge of  the  same;  (3)  a  definite  course 
of  conduct,  entirely  controlled  and  ruled 
by  motives  growing  out  of  the  definite 
belief  and  the  definite  experience. 

THE   DEFINITE    BELIEF 

The  entrance  into  the  inner  temple  of 
Christianity  is  through  the  door  of  belief. 


The  Christian  19 

and  without  this  belief  there  can  be  no 
farther  progress.  There  cannot  be  an  act 
of  faith  and  a  definite  experience  without 
the  necessary  mental  grasp  of  the  truth. 
The  rescue  from  sin  is  possible  to  none 
but  believers.  There  are  cerain  things 
that  a  Christian  believes  that  distinguish 
him  from  all  other  men.  To  a  large  part 
of  his  belief  others  may  give  assent,  but 
he  holds  some  central  convictions  which 
are  the  essential  marks  of  Christianity, 
The  Christian  creed  may  be  briefly 
summed  up  as  follows :  A  definite  belief 
in  the  Trinity,  one  God  in  three  Persons, 
Creator,  Preserver,  and  Ruler  of  all 
things.  To  this  God  man  owes  perfect 
love  and  obedience.  God  has  revealed 
himself  to  man  in  nature,  in  conscience, 
in  history,  and  in  the  Holy  Scriptures. 
The  most  complete  revelation  of  God  is  in 
the  work  and  person  of  Jesus  Christ,  the 
Son  of  God  and  the  Son  of  man,  who  was 
conceived  by  the  Holy  Ghost,  was  born  of 
the  Virgin  Mary,  lived  a  normal  human 


20  Personal  Salvation 

life,  was  crucified,  dead,  and  buried;  the 
third  day  he  arose  from  the  dead  and  as- 
cended into  heaven.  Of  his  life  and  teach- 
ing the  four  gospels  give  an  adequate  and 
accurate  account.  He  is  the  Saviour  of 
the  human  race,  his  Incarnation,  Cruci- 
fixion, Resurrection,  and  Ascension  being 
the  great  deeds  by  which  he  made  atone- 
ment for  sin,  and  rescued  the  human 
brotherhood.  He  will  come  again  at  the 
end  of  the  world.  The  dead  will  all  be 
raised  and  all  men  will  be  judged  accord- 
ing to  the  deeds  done  in  the  body,  and  the 
good  and  the  bad  will  be  separated  both 
as  to  place  and  condition.  God  has  set 
his  seal  upon  the  Holy  Scriptures  as  an 
accurate  record  of  the  preparation  for 
and  the  accomplishment  of  the  great  deed 
of  redemption.  All  of  these  things  a  man 
must  believe  in  order  to  call  his  creed 
Christian.  But  the  center  of  the  whole  is 
the  belief  in  the  deity  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  who  by  his  infinite  self-sacrifice 
made  a  real  atonement  for  sin  and  accom- 


The  Christian  21 

plished  the  deed  of  redemption.  With  this 
fundamental  doctrine  firmly  held,  the 
others  fall  in  order  about  it.  Nothing 
short  of  this  can  be  accepted  as  true 
Christian  belief.  On  the  way  to  Damas- 
cus Paul  was  convinced  of  the  fact  that 
Jesus  was  the  Son  of  God,  and  that,  hav- 
ing been  crucified,  dead,  and  buried,  he 
was  risen  from  the  dead  and  ascended 
into  heaven.  At  that  moment  his  be- 
lief, which  had  been  Jewish,  became 
Christian. 

It  is  one  mission  of  the  Holy  Spirit  to 
testify  to  the  truth  of  these  doctrines  con- 
cerning the  Christ.  When  a  man  is  truly 
and  earnestly  hungering  for  God  and  is 
sincerely  seeking  a  rescue  from  sin — 
when  such  a  man  hears  the  doctrines  of 
the  Gospel  presented  the  Holy  Spirit  in 
some  way  convinces  that  man  of  the 
truth  of  the  redemption  in  Jesus  Christ 
and  the  way  to  God  through  him.  The 
evangelist  is  sent  into  the  world  to  an- 
nounce   the    doctrines    concerning    the 


22  Personal  Salvation 

Christ  in  order  that  the  Holy  Spirit  may 
interpret  them  to  such  as  seek  to  know 
God  and  the  power  of  his  redemption. 

A  DEFINITE   EXPERIENCE 

With  his  belief  as  a  starting  point,  the 
man  who  becomes  a  Christian  must  act- 
ually pass  through  the  process  of  rescue, 
must  experience  the  power  of  the  divinely 
provided  redemption.  The  process  of 
rescue  is  often  called  conversion,  although 
the  word  "conversion"  may  only  properly 
include  a  part  of  the  mental  process.  "Ex- 
perience" is  a  word  in  common  use  in  our 
own  Church  to  designate  the  "internal 
states  and  feelings  through  which  one  has 
passed  or  is  now  passing"  in  the  process 
of  rescue  from  sin.  An  experience  is  an 
actual  affair  through  which  a  man  has 
passed.  He  knows  it  for  himself;  he 
does  not  need  anyone  to  tell  him  about  it. 
Now,  the  Christian  has  had  a  certain 
definite  experience,  certain  states  and 
feelings  through  which  he  has  actually 


The  Christian  23 

passed  which  have  become  real  facts  in 
his  Hfe.  They  make  his  reHgious  Hfe  very 
different  from  the  religious  life  of  one 
who  has  not  had  this  experience.  The 
experience  which  makes  a  man  a  normal 
Christian  includes:  (i)  A  definite  con- 
viction of  sin  as  rebellion  against  the  holy 
God,  with  a  knowledge  of  the  divine  dis- 
pleasure and  a  fear  of  punishment  from 
which  he  has  no  power  to  rescue  himself; 
(2)  a  definite  repentance,  in  which  he 
loathes  his  sin  and  with  a  contrite  heart 
turns  away  from  it  because  it  is  displeas- 
ing to  God;  (3)  a  definite  consciousness 
that  in  Jesus  Christ  God  offers  him  a 
complete  rescue,  including  pardon  and 
restoration;  (4)  a  definite  act  of  faith  by 
which  he  accq^ts  Christ  as  a  personal 
Saviour  and  gives  hiswhole  self  to  Christ, 
thus  trusting  himself  to  the  divine  rescue 
and  resting  upon  it;  (5)  a  definite  wit- 
ness within  that  he  is  accepted  of  God 
and  is  now  a  member  of  God's  family; 
(6)   a   definite   consciousness   of    power 


24  Personal  Salvation 

over  sin,  whether  presented  by  outvi^ard 
temptation  or  inward  suggestion. 

The  man  who  has  had  this  experience 
has  passed  through  the  process  of  rescue 
and  is  a  Christian.  Paul  had  all  of  these 
"internal  states  and  feelings"  and  bore 
testimony  to  them.  He  could  not  have 
had  them  unless  his  belief  had  passed 
from  Jewish  to  Christian.  This  experi- 
ence never  loses  its  freshness  and  power. 
It  is  always  present,  always  new.  Nor  is 
it  necessarily  all  secured  at  once.  A  par- 
tial belief  may  give  a  partial  experience, 
and  as  belief  deepens  the  experience  will 
become  more  definite.  And  the  experi- 
ence always  reacts  upon  the  belief,  making 
it  clearer  and  stronger,  until  it  practically 
becomes  knowledge  rather  than  mere  be- 
lief. This  will  be  discussed  more  at  length 
in  the  chapter  on  "Christian  Assurance." 

A  DEFINITE  COURSE  OF  LIFE 

To  continue  to  be  a  Christian  a  man 
must  bring  his  conduct  into  subjection  to 


The  Christian  25 

the  belief  and  the  experience.  Not  every 
well-meant  life  is  a  Christian  life.  The 
doctrines  of  Christianity  and  the  experi- 
ence of  the  personal  rescue  bring  into  the 
man's  life  certain  great  motives,  and  it  is 
only  as  these  motives  rule  in  his  life  that 
he  is  a  Christian.  These  motives  gather 
up  all  lesser  interests  and  compel  the 
thought  and  affections  to  subject  them- 
selves to  the  one  great  motive  of  love  and 
loyalty  to  Jesus  Christ.  By  reason  of  the 
rescue  from  sin  the  man  has  been  restored 
to  the  right  relation  with  the  Father,  and 
has  also  become  a  vital  center  in  the  new 
holy  brotherhood  which  the  Father  is  or- 
ganizing about  Jesus  Christ,  the  Elder 
Brother.  Hence  this  definite  life  has  a 
peculiar  relation  to  God  and  to  our  fel- 
low-men. In  relation  to  the  Father  it  is  a 
life  of  blessed  communion,  of  the  indwell- 
ing of  the  Holy  Spirit,  of  loving  service 
and  obedience;  a  life  of  freedom,  since 
he  is  no  longer  "under  bondage,"  but  is 
become  a  child  of  God.    In  relation  to  our 


26  Personal  Salvation 

fellow-men  it  is  a  life  of  fellowship  and 
loA'e  and  service,  its  one  great  characteris- 
tic being  a  spirit  of  self-sacrifice  in  behalf 
of  the  brotherhood  of  man.  "Hereby 
know  we  love  because  he  laid  down  his 
life  for  us;  and  we  ought  to  lay  down  our 
lives  for  the  brethren,"  The  Master  has 
summed  it  all  up  in  one  sentence:  *'As 
Thou  didst  send  me  into  the  world,  even 
so  send  I  them  into  the  world."  A  con- 
vert at  Jerry  McAuley's  prayer  meeting 
had  the  true  spirit  of  Christianity  when 
he  said,  "Jesus  Christ  died  to  give  you  a 
show.  If  you  want  to  follow  him  get 
onto  his  cross  and  suffer,  your  own  self, 
for  some  poor  chap  that  is  worse  than  you 
are." 

Thus  a  man  becomes  a  Christian.  God 
furnishes  the  facts  for  the  belief,  he  pro- 
vides the  opportunity  and  the  power  for 
the  experience,  he  supplies  the  power  for 
the  life;  by  faith  the  Christian  appropri- 
ates them  and  makes  them  his  own. 

The  Christian  religion  is  a  necessity  in 


The  Christian  27 

the  development  of  manhood.  The  Chris- 
tian is  not  an  artificial,  morbid,  un- 
healthy, cranky  "saint."  He  Is  a  sane, 
healthy,  normal,  developed  man.  The 
passage  of  the  individual  through  the  en- 
tire process  of  rescue  is  sometimes  rapid 
and  sometimes  slow.  The  time  required 
depends  upon  the  man  and  the  conditions 
surrounding  him.  But  in  every  case  the 
real  process  is  wholesome,  rational,  vital, 
and  freefrom  artificial,  factitious,  mechan- 
ical elements.  In  so  far  as  such  elements 
are  present  the  real  process  of  rescue  is 
hindered.  The  Christian  religion  is 
adapted  to  man  and  fits  into  his  life  with- 
out doing  any  violence  to  conscience  or 
any  other  part  of  the  moral  nature.  "It 
will  meet  a  man  at  any  stage  of  the  moral 
process  and  start  him  on  toward  the 
goal." 

The  following  chapters  will  deal  with" 
the  events  of  the  Christian's  experience, 
describing  the  states  and  feelings  and 
naming    the    stages   through    which    he 


28  Personal  Salvation 

passes.  They  will  tell  what  happens  to  a 
man  as  he  passes  through  the  process  of 
an  actual  rescue  from  sin  and  its  results. 
It  is  not  claimed  that  every  case  of  con- 
version must  exactly  fit  this  outline,  but 
the  type  is  a  real  one,  and  the  stages  here 
described  are  actually  present  in  every 
case  even  though  the  convert  may  not  be 
conscious  of  them. 

There  are  no  better  names  to  be  found 
for  the  stages  of  the  spiritual  life  than 
.those  in  common  use,  hence  there  has 
been  no  hesitation  in  using  them.  But  it 
is  hoped  that  this  explanation  will  help  to 
a  clearer  understanding  of  their  meaning 
and  free  them  from  some  objectionable 
ideas  which  have  gathered  about  them. 
Every  effort  will  be  made  to  make  the 
reader  feel  that  we  are  talking  about  him 
rather  than  talking  theology. 


Preparation  for  Conversion  29 


CHAPTER  II 

Preparation  for  Conversion 

Conversion  is  the  process  of  personal 
salvation;  it  is  that  "spiritual  and  moral 
change  attending  a  change  of  attitude 
toward  God;  a  change  of  heart;  a 
change  from  the  service  of  the  world  to 
the  service  of  God ;  a  change  of  the  ruling 
disposition  of  the  soul,  involving  a  trans- 
formation of  the  outward  life."  There  is  a 
vast  difference  between  a  real  conversion 
and  a  desire  or  determination  to  lead  a 
new  life.  Conversion  means  the  whole 
of  the  process  of  the  rescue  from  sin.  Its 
starting  point  is  repentance;  its  goal  is 
a  mind,  heart,  and  will  entirely  loyal  to 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  thus  making  the 
convert  a  member  of  the  family  of  God, 
of  the  new  brotherhood  which  God  is  or- 
ganizing about  Christ,  the  Saviour.  In 
addition  to  the  above  there  is  also  in  con- 


30  Personal  Salvation 

version  a  new  birth,  an  impartation  of  a 
divine  life,  which  will  in  its  completion 
make  of  the  loyal  person  a  holy  person, 
thus  bringing  him  to  the  second  goal  of 
the  Christian  life. 

The  preparation  for  conversion  is  that 
combination  of  influences  which,  acting 
upon  the  person,  brings  him  squarely  up 
to  the  house  of  rescue,  into  which  he  may 
enter  through  the  door  of  repentance.  In 
this  preparation,  as  in  all  of  God's  deal- 
ings with  man,  there  are  both  human  and 
divine  elements.  God  uses  human  agen- 
cies and  he  also  works  directly  within  the 
soul.  The  human  agencies  are  the  in- 
fluence of  individuals,  the  influence  of  the 
Church,  and  the  bearing  of  the  man  him- 
self. As  a  direct  work  of  God  there  is  the 
enlightenment  of  the  spiritual  under- 
standing, the  awakening  of  a  personal  in- 
terest in  salvation,  the  conviction  of  sin, 
and  the  gracious  invitation  to  accept 
Christ  and  secure  forgiveness  and  peace 
with  God.  All  of  these  precede  repentance 


Preparation  for  Conversion  31 

and  are  a  preparation  for  it.  They  are  not 
imaginary  or  theological  pictures.  They 
are  real  experiences  in  the  life  of  every 
one  who  is  under  the  influence  of  the 
Chrstian  Church  and  the  Gospel  message. 
God  does  everything  he  can  do  to  secure 
the  rescue  of  every  human  being. 


32  Personal  Salvation 


CHAPTER  III 

Human  Side  of  the  Preparation 

i.  the  influence  of  individuals 

"No  action,  whether  foul  or  fair, 

Is  ever  done  but  it  leaves  somewhere 

A  record 

In  the  greater  weakness  or  the  greater  strength 

Of  all  the  acts  which  follow  it." 

Every  man  has  more  or  less  influence 
in  helping  other  men  to  meet  God  at  the 
place  of  rescue  or  in  keeping  men  away 
from  God.  A  man's  neighbors  help  in 
many  ways  to  determine  the  time,  the 
form,  and  the  place  of  the  test  by  which 
his  final  destiny  is  decided.  Every  Indif- 
ferent person,  everyone  who  has  rejected 
the  divine  rescue,  has  a  harmful  Influence 
upon  those  about  him.  Every  person  who 
has  accepted  God  helps  to  bring  others  to 
the  place  of  acceptance.  By  the  righteous- 
ness of  his  life,  by  his  fidelity  in  thought, 
word,  and  deed  to  the  Christian  spirit,  by 


Human  Side  of  the  Preparation     33 

the  moral  power  inherent  in  Christian 
character,  by  the  word  of  testimony,  by 
the  feehng  and  expression  of  a  profound 
personal  interest  in  his  neighbor,  the 
Christian  constantly  influences  others  and 
helps  God  to  secure  their  salvation.  The 
Christian  exerts  this  influence  when  he  is 
entirely  unconscious  of  it  as  well  as  when 
he  is  actively  engaged  in  urging  others  to 
accept  Christ.  God  can  use  our  lives  as 
well  as  our  words  to  help  others.  Some- 
times the  unconscious  influence  is  most  ef- 
fective. IMany  a  person  has  been  helped 
over  a  hard  place  on  the  road  to  God  by  a 
friendly  word,  a  kind  invitation,  a  broth- 
erly act,  or  even  by  a  hearty  handshake  or 
a  cheerful  Christian  smile.  Also  every 
dishonest  or  unfaithful  act  on  the  part  of 
a  Christian  has  a  tendency  to  prevent  oth- 
ers from  seeing  the  Christ  and  accepting 
him.  So  we  find  that  the  personal  bearing 
of  individuals,  and  especially  the  bearing 
of  Christians,  has  a  great  influence  in  the 
preparation  for  conversion. 


34  Personal  Salvation 

II.    THE  INFLUENCE  OF  THE  CHURCH 

In  bringing  men  to  the  place  of  repent- 
ance the  church  as  an  organization  exerts 
an  influence  which  far  exceeds  the  sum 
total  of  the  influence  of  its  individual 
members.  There  are  certain  great  con- 
ditions of  church  v^orship  which,  if  fully 
met,  would  result  in  constant  conversions. 
When  in  the  beauty  of  holiness  God  is 
worshiped  in  spirit  and  in  truth,  and  the 
fellowship  of  brotherly  love  goes  from 
Heart  to  heart,  then  the  Holy  Spirit  is 
present  in  such  power  that  every  sinner 
within  its  influence  will  feel  the  shock  and 
be  brought  to  an  immediate  decision. 
This  influence,  secured  by  the  presence  of 
the  Holy  Spirit,  is  a  power  over  the  con- 
sciences of  men  which  lays  their  hearts 
open  before  them  and  brings  them  face  to 
face  with  God.  The  power  is  always 
present  when  the  conditions  are  met: 
sincere,  holy  worship  and  brotherly  love. 
Until  then  no  amount  of  prayer  for  the 


Human  Side  of  the  Preparation     35 

power  of  the  Holy  Spirit  can  secure  it, 
but  prayer  may  be  a  large  factor  in  secur- 
ing the  proper  conditions.  The  one  hun- 
dred and  twenty  disciples  in  the  upper 
room  did  not  spend  the  ten  days  in  be- 
seeching a  coy  spirit  to  move,  but  in  learn- 
ing the  spirit  of  Christ,  in  getting  into 
loving  relations  with  one  another,  in  wor- 
shiping God  "zvith  one  accord."  When 
the  power  came  each  one  received  his  por- 
tion. When  a  church  meets  the  condi- 
tions it  will  receive  a  Pentecost — not  to 
talk  about,  but  to  use  in  the  conversion  of 
the  world.  When  this  power  is  present 
its  influence  cannot  be  resisted.  Men  will 
be  pricked  in  their  hearts  and  will  ask 
what  they  must  do  to  be  saved.  The  chil- 
dren in  the  Sunday  school  will  have  their 
share  of  the  power,  and  will  carry  it  home 
with  them  to  disturb  the  parents  who  are 
not  churchgoers.  This  power  will  even 
follow  a  missionary  offering  halfway 
around  the  world  and  make  it  effective  in 
securing  the  rescue  of  the  heathen. 


36  Personal  Salvation 

The  church  has  not  to-day,  and  never 
has  had,  a  full  measure  of  this  power,  this 
grip  on  the  consciences  of  men.  Perhaps 
one  reason  why  the  church  has  so  little 
power  is  because  those  who  seek  the 
power  seek  it  for  themselves  rather  than 
for  the  church  as  a  unit.  One  reason 
surely  lies  in  the  spirit  of  wordliness  and 
selfishness  which  sometimes  pervades  a 
church.  Remember  that  this  power  is  not 
identical  with  the  special  indwelling  of 
the  Holy  Spirit  which  is  the  privilege  of 
each  believer,  nor  yet  with  the  peculiar 
manifestation  of  the  Spirit  given  to  those 
who  have  passed  to  the  second  goal, 
Christian  holiness,  although  it  is  a  bless- 
ing given  by  the  same  Spirit.  "There  are 
diversities  of  gifts,  but  the  same  Spirit," 
It  is  a  little  unnatural  and  mechanical  to 
suppose  that  the  one  hundred  and  twenty 
were  all  in  exactly  the  same  stage  of 
Christian  experience,  yet  they  all  received 
the  baptism  of  power  because  it  took  all  of 
them  to  make  the  church  and  meet  the 


Human  Side  of  the  Preparation     37 

conditions.  Tlie  power  we  are  speaking 
of  is  a  power  in  the  church  secured  by 
meeting  the  conditions  of  church  service. 
This  power  may  not  exhaust  the  gift  of 
Pentecost,  yet  it  is  one  separate  and  dis- 
tinct result  of  the  Pentecost. 

The  church  of  the  present  time  is  con- 
scious of  its  weakness  in  this  respect,  and 
in  some  cases  is  attempting  to  supply  the 
deficiency  and  secure  the  desired  results 
by  making  activity  and  service  a  substi- 
tute for  the  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 
The  institutional  church  does  a  good 
work,  but  its  activity  is  a  poor  substitute 
for  the  power  of  the  Holy  Ghost  and  can- 
not secure  the  real  work  of  rescue  from 
sin.  A  well-equipped  church  with  abun- 
dant acti\'ity  may  be  very  prosperous  and 
very  pleasing,  but  it  must  not  forget  that 
the  real  power  in  its  service  lies  in  the 
presence  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  When  a 
child  is  sick  we  do  all  we  can  to  amuse 
and  comfort  him,  but  we  do  not  imagine 
for  a  moment  that  by  so  doing  we  have 


38  Personal  Salvation 

touched  the  disease.  Keeping  the  child  in 
a  quiet  and  cheerful  frame  of  mind  may 
assist  nature,  but  something  else  is  needed 
to  arrest  the  progress  of  death.  So  the 
helpful  and  elevating  influences  and  ac- 
tivities of  the  institutional  church  may- 
help  to  bring  men  under  the  influence  of 
the  Gospel,  but  the  dreadful  disease  of 
sin  is  not  touched  until  the  Holy  Spirit  is 
present.  There  can  be  no  substitute  for 
the  power  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  bringing 
men  to  repentance.  The  Spirit  will  mani- 
fest his  power  in  any  church,  however 
poor  and  humble,  whenever  the  conditions 
are  met.  The  church  has  a  great  influence 
in  the  preparation  for  conversion. 

III.    PERSONAL  BEARING  OF  THE  SINNER 

Man  is  not  able  to  rescue  himself,  yet 
he  can  determine  to  some  extent  the  time 
of  his  conversion.  Certain  states  of  mind 
must  always  precede  repentance.  A  cer- 
tain amount  of  spiritual  knowledge  must 
be  present  before  there  can  be  a  definite 


Human  Side  of  the  Preparation     39 

conviction  of  sin,  without  which  there 
cannot  be  true  repentance.  Now,  a  man 
may  try  to  keep  himself  away  from  all 
spiritual  influences.  He  cannot  entirely 
escape  the  influence  of  individuals  nor  of 
a  holy  church,  yet  his  individual  bearing 
toward  the  truth  will  partly  determine  the 
time  and  place  of  his  spiritual  crises.  It  is 
true  that  he  cannot  at  all  escape  the  direct 
work  of  God  in  bringing  him  to  the  place 
of  rescue,  yet,  since  God  works  as  much 
as  possible  through  human  agencies,  the 
bearing  of  the  man  himself  will  help 
to  determine  the  time  when  God  will 
consider  it  most  opportune  to  bring 
a  spiritual  crisis  upon  him.  The  per- 
sonal attitude  of  the  man  toward  sin 
and  righteousness  will  also  have  much 
to  do  with  the  quality  of  his  spiritual 
knowledge. 

It  is  a  profound  and  important  law  of 
moral  development  that  by  doing  right  a 
man  may  bring  himself  to  a  state  of  moral 
unrest.     The  approval  of  conscience,  if 


40  Personal  Salvation 

faithfully  sought,  will  finally  become  dis- 
approval, and,  while  there  is  a  vast  dif- 
ference between  the  ordinary  condemna- 
tion of  conscience  and  the  conviction  of 
sin,  yet  this  peculiar  disapproval  is  really 
the  beginning  of  a  conviction  of  sin  and 
presents  an  opportunity  for  a  new  and 
better  life.  The  explanation  is  this :  By 
obeying  conscience  the  moral  faculties  are 
quickened  and  the  moral  ideal  mercilessly 
expands  until  finally  the  moral  man  comes 
to  a  place  where  he  demands  of  himself 
a  perfect  moral  life;  perfect  not  only  in 
fragmentary  moral  deeds,  but  perfect  in 
a  "personal  bearing  toward  right  as  a 
total  thing."  It  is  impossible  for  the  man 
to  meet  this  constantly  increasing  demand 
of  his  moral  nature,  and  unless  he  decides 
to  give  the  whole  thing  up  he  speedily 
comes  to  the  point  where  he  is  profoundly 
conscious  of  his  need  of  help.  The  feel- 
ing that  some  help  is  necessary  gives  the 
ever-present  Holy  Spirit  an  opportunity 
to  enlighten  the  man  and  bring  clearly  be- 


Human  Side  of  the  Preparation     41 

fore  him  the  plan  of  rescue,  which  in- 
cludes forgiveness  for  all  past  sins  and  the 
impartation  of  such  help  as  will  enable 
him  to  meet  the  demand  of  his  constantly 
growing  ideal,  thus  keeping  him  free 
from  future  sin.  The  process  of  conver- 
sion does  not  change  the  moral  process. 
There  is  the  change  of  attitude  caused 
by  the  new  relation  to  Christ  and  the 
necessary  help  is  granted,  otherwise 
the  moral  development  continues  as  be- 
fore. In  conversion  the  total  man  is 
gathered  up  and  started  on  toward  the 
last  goal  of  a  perfect  manhood.  So  the 
bearing  of  the  man  himself  is  a  very 
important  factor  in  the  preparation  for 
conversion. 

But,  while  these  human  elements  in  the 
preparation  are  very  potent,  the  ruling 
power  is  not  in  human  hands.  With  or 
without  the  help  of  individuals,  of  the 
church,  or  of  the  man  himself,  God  works 
with  the  man  and  at  opportune  times 
brings  a  test  upon  him,  compelling  him  to 


42  Personal  Salvation 

decide  one  way  or  the  other.  So  we  turn 
to  the  work  of  God,  in  this  preparation 
for  conversion,  and  find  it  complete  and 
perfectly  adapted  to  secure  the  desired 
result. 


Spiritual  Enlightenment  43 


CHAPTER  IV 
Spiritual  Enlightenment 

The  possession  of  spiritual  knowledge 
is  a  necessary  preparation  for  conversion. 
A  man  cannot  have  a  personal  interest  in 
salvation  unless  he  knows  something 
about  it.  There  cannot  be  conviction  of 
sin  without  knowledge  of  God.  There 
cannot  be  a  wise  choice  in  which  Christ  is 
accepted  unless  there  is  sufficient  knowl- 
edge to  give  a  keen  appreciation  of  the 
importance  of  the  situation.  This  en- 
lightenment must  amount  to  real  spiritual 
discernment  or  it  is  not  sufficient.  This 
opening  of  the  spiritual  eyes  and  quicken- 
ing of  the  spiritual  perceptions  is  secured 
by  the  ordinary  working  of  conscience 
and  by  the  direct  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit. 

This  is  not  the  place  for  a  discussion  of 
conscience,  nor  even  for  a  definition  of  it. 
It  is,  however,  in  a  very  true  sense  the 


44  Personal  Salvation 

voice  of  God  speaking  in  the  human  soul, 
teaching  it  righteousness  and  leading  it 
toward  God.  While  it  may  not  teach  man 
what  the  right  is,  it  always  gives  an  im- 
pulse toward  right  action  whene^^er  the 
right  is  known,  or  approved  by  the  moral 
judgment.  By  fidelity  to  conscience  a 
man  not  only  sharpens  his  moral  percep- 
tions, and  enlightens  and  develops  his 
moral  nature,  but  he  also  gives  the  Holy 
Spirit  opportunity  to  impart  knowledge 
and  make  spiritual  impressions. 

The  Holy  Spirit  is  man's  greatest 
teacher  in  spiritual  things.  If  conscience 
does  not  tell  what  the  right  is  the  Holy 
Spirit  can  and  does  so  teach  us.  In  earli- 
est childhood  the  Holy  Spirit  begins  this 
spiritual  enlightenment,  and  he  never 
leaves  us  until,  by  continued  rejection  and 
a  settled  course  of  sin,  spiritual  knowl- 
edge Is  made  Impossible.  No  man  in  any 
age,  country,  or  condition  has  been  with- 
out the  Influence  of  the  Holy  Spirit  In  his 
heart  and  life.  We  used  to  hear  about  the 


Spiritual  Enlightenment  45 

"natural  man"  whose  very  virtues  were 
sins,  and  who  could  not  do  anything  good 
if  he  wanted  to,  because  he  had  not  the 
Holy  Spirit.  There  never  was  such  a 
man  and  never  will  be.  He  was  a  theo- 
logical fiction.  Such  a  man  would  be  very 
"unnatural;"  the  natural  condition  of 
man  is  that  the  Holy  Spirit  is  always 
present  with  him,  seeking  opportunity  to 
teach  spiritual  truth,  to  make  spiritual 
impressions,  to  impart  spiritual  knowl- 
edge, to  sharpen  the  spiritual  perceptions, 
to  open  the  eyes  and  prepare  the  heart,  to 
help  the  whole  man  to  see  God  and  to  in- 
fluence the  whole  man  to  accept  God. 
"Man  was  not  made  to  live  alone,  he  was 
made  to  live  under  the  moral  law  with 
help."  God  will  not  leave  a  man  alone 
when  he  is  in  the  greatest  need  of  help, 
even  though  the  greater  need  be  occa- 
sioned by  man's  sin.  God  will  not  leave 
a  man  alone  so  long  as  help  will  be  of  any 
benefit  to  him.  A  foolish  woman  said  that 

she  would  like  to  go  to  hell  because  there 
4 


46  Personal  Salvation 

would  be  some  one  there  that  she  could 
help.  She  was  mistaken.  If  there  was 
any  help  for  them  they  would  not  be 
there.  Let  her  consider  Calvary  and 
learn  a  little  wisdom  in  spiritual  things. 
Our  God  is  not  the  kind  of  a  God  that  will 
forsake  a  man  when  he  is  in  need  of  help. 
Indeed,  God  will  not  forsake  him  even 
though  he  be  past  help.  The  final  state  of 
the  wicked,  with  its  "outer  darkness"  and 
"unquenchable  fire"  and  its  "weeping  and 
gnashing  of  teeth,"  will  be  just  as  com- 
fortable as  infinite  love  can  make  such  a 
place. 

Because  he  usually  works  through  the 
ordinary  events  of  life  the  Holy  Spirit  is 
spoken  of  as  "seeking  opportunity."  The 
Holy  Spirit  touches  something  the  man 
already  knows,  lifts  it  up,  gives  it  a  new 
meaning,  and  shows  it  in  new  and  more 
exalted  relations.  It  is  very  evident  that 
the  great  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  en- 
lightenment is  among  those  people  to 
whom  the  Gospel  is  preached,  since  the 


Spiritual  Enlightenment  47 

hearing  of  Christian  truth  gives  the  Holy 
Spirit  so  much  better  material  to  work 
with.  Also,  the  Christian  religion  being 
God's  method  of  rescue,  the  Holy  Spirit 
is  present  with  it  in  a  very  peculiar  man- 
ner. The  Holy  Spirit  is  sent  to  show  us 
the  things  of  Christ,  and  the  essential 
truths  of  Christianity  cannot  be  perceived 
unless  the  Holy  Spirit  interpret  them  to 
our  hearts. 

The  Holy  Spirit  never  gives  a  man  up 
until  by  continued  rejections  and  by  a  set- 
tled course  of  disobedience  he  makes  it 
impossible  for  spiritual  impressions  to  be 
received.  Sin  blunts  and  weakens  and,  if 
willfully  persisted  in,  finally  destroys  the 
whole  moral  nature,  making  all  spiritual 
knowledge  and  all  spiritual  action  impos- 
sible.   In  such  a  case  there  is  no  help. 

A  man  can  greatly  help  in  the  work  of 
enlightenment  by  placing  himself  in  the 
way  of  spiritual  knowledge.  By  church 
attendance,  by  prayer,  by  Bible  reading, 
by  helping  others,  by  serious  meditation, 


48  Personal  Salvation 

opportunity  is  given  to  the  Holy  Spirit  to 
prepare  the  man  for  rescue.  Every  Bible 
verse  committed  to  memory,  every  song 
or  testimony  held  in  the  mind,  is  a  maga- 
zine of  explosives  to  which  the  Holy 
Spirit  may  at  any  moment  apply  a  spark 
and  shake  the  soul  to  its  very  foundations. 
By  carelessness  and  frivolity,  by  sin  and 
selfishness,  the  Holy  Spirit  is  grieved  and 
he  may  even  depart  for  a  season. 

The  Holy  Spirit  does  not  always  wait 
for  opportunities.  He  sometimes  forces 
the  truth  upon  the  heart  and  mind  in 
quiet  or  in  violent  ways.  If  we  will  not 
hear  the  still  small  voice  the  earthquake 
or  the  whirlwind  may  compel  attention. 

So  the  man  and  conscience  and  the 
Holy  Spirit  work  together.  This  is  beau- 
tifully illustrated  by  an  Incident  quoted 
by  Canon  Farrar.  A  man  well  known  for 
his  good  works  tells  this  anecdote  of  his 
childhood:  "When  I  was  a  little  boy,  in 
my  fourth  year,  one  fine  day  in  spring  my 
father  led  me  by  the  hand  to  a  distant  part 


Spiritual  Enlightenment  49 

of  the  farm,  but  soon  sent  me  home  alone. 
On  the  way  I  had  to  pass  a  little  pond.  A 
rhodora  in  full  bloom,  a  rare  flower  which 
grew  only  in  that  locality,  attracted  my 
attention  and  drew  me  to  the  spot.  I  saw 
a  little  tortoise  sunning  himself  in  the 
shallow  water  at  the  foot  of  the  flaming 
shrub.  I  lifted  the  stick  I  had  in  my  hand 
to  strike  the  harmless  reptile;  for,  though 
I  had  never  killed  any  creature,  I  had  seen 
other  boys  do  so,  and  I  felt  a  disposition 
to  follow  their  wicked  example.  But  all 
at  once  something  checked  my  little  arm, 
and  a  voice  within  me  said,  clear  and 
loud,  'It  is  wrong.'  I  held  my  uplifted 
stick  in  wonder  at  the  new  emotion,  con- 
scious of  an  involuntary  but  inward  check 
upon  my  actions,  till  the  tortoise  and  the 
rhodora  had  passed  from  my  sight.  I 
hastened  home  and  told  the  tale  to  my 
mother  and  asked  her  what  it  was  that 
told  me  it  was  wrong.  Taking  me  in  her 
arms,  she  said,  'Some  men  call  it  con- 
science; but  I  prefer  to  call  it  the  voice  of 


50  Personal  Salvation 

God.  If  you  listen  and  obey  it,  then  it 
will  speak  clearer  and  clearer,  and  always 
guide  you  right;  but  if  you  turn  a  deaf 
ear,  or  disobey,  then  it  will  fade  out  little 
by  little  and  leave  you  in  the  dark  and 
without  a  guide.' "  The  mother  was 
right.  It  was  not  conscience,  it  was  the 
Holy  Spirit  speaking  directly  to  the  child. 
Conscience  was  present  and  active,  but 
the  voice  was  the  Holy  Spirit  embracing 
that  opportunity  tO'  enlighten  the  child. 
The  result  was  a  quickened  conscience 
and  an  enlightened  moral  nature.  Just 
so  God  enlightens  the  heart  and  mind  of 
the  sinner,  teaching  him  the  truth  about 
himself  and  about  God,  preparing  him  for 
the  great  work  of  personal  salvation. 

The  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  impart- 
ing spiritual  knowledge  is  not  confined  to 
the  preparation  for  conversion.  It  con- 
tinues throughout  the  whole  of  the  Chris- 
tian life;  the  new  relation  to  Christ  se- 
cured by  the  conversion  giving  the  Holy 
Spirit  a  new  and  much  better  opportunity 


Spiritual  Enlightenment  51 

to  teach  and  train.  At  present  we  are  only 
concerned  with  the  enlightenment  as  a 
preparation  for  conversion.  As  we  fol- 
low the  work  of  preparation  we  will  see 
its  value.  When  the  enlightenment  has 
proceeded  so  far,  and  the  time  is  propi- 
tious, the  Holy  Spirit  awakens  a  personal 
interest  in  salvation.  This  condition  of 
awakened  interest  gives  opportunity  for  a 
new  enlightenment  in  which  finally  a 
vision  of  God  is  flashed  before  the  man, 
producing  conviction  of  sin,  which  in  turn 
is  followed  by  a  new  enlightenment  lead- 
ing up  to  a  gracious  invitation  to  accept 
Christ  as  a  means  of  rescue.  "He  that 
cometh  to  God  must  believe  that  he  is,  and 
that  he  is  a  rewarder  of  them  that  dili- 
gently seek  him." 


52  Personal  Salvation 


CHAPTER  V 

Spiritual  Awakkning 

The  enlightenment  of  the  spiritual  un- 
derstanding" is  followed  by  a  state  of 
awakened  interest  in  God  and  in  personal 
salvation.  This  feeling  of  personal  inter- 
est is  produced  partly  by  the  presence  of 
the  spiritual  knowledge  and  partly  by  a 
direct  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  soul 
was  made  to  enjoy  communion  with  God, 
and  spiritual  knowledge  arouses  and  stirs 
the  dormant  powers  and  the  man  begins 
to  hunger  after  God  and  has  a  lively  per- 
sonal interest  in  securing  a  proper  rela- 
tion with  him.  This  feeling  of  personal 
interest,  aroused  by  a  taste  of  spiritual 
knowledge,  gives  the  Holy  Spirit  an 
opportunity  to  impart  a  larger  measure 
of  knowledge  and  also  to  increase  and 
deepen  the  personal  interest  by  quickening 
it  with  his  own  divine  life,  thus  making  it 


Spritual  Awakening  53 

a  real  work  of  grace.  God  is  bringing  the 
man  to  the  place  of  decision  under  the 
most  favorable  conditions.  That  he  may 
have  the  best  opportunity  to  come  into  the 
kingdom,  God  takes  up  the  soul's  first 
feeble  movements  to  know  itself,  fills 
them  with  his  own  power,  and  creates  in 
the  man's  heart  a  fervent  desire  for  a  res- 
cue from  sin  and  for  a  right  relation  with 
God.  The  Holy  Spirit,  if  not  resisted, 
also  imparts  to  the  man  such  a  spirit  of 
teachableness  and  humility  that  he  will 
keep  himself  under  the  divine  teaching,  so 
that  the  testing  time,  when  it  comes,  finds 
the  man  thoroughly  prepared. 

Thus  the  man  begins  to  show  an  inter- 
est in  spiritual  things.  He  goes  to  church 
every  Sunday  and  gives  attention  to  the 
whole  service.  He  reads  his  Bible  and 
loves  spiritual  hymns.  The  way  seems  all 
clear  and  easy  before  him.  His  friends 
are  encouraged.  Boldly  he  starts  out 
from  the  City  of  Destruction,  and  the 
Celestial  City  seems  almost  in  sight.  Just 


54  Personal  Salvation 

before  him,  however,  is  the  Slough  of 
Despond,  and  every  step  toward  God 
brings  him  nearer  to  that  sad  and  bitter 
experience  from  which  there  is  no  escape. 
His  awakened  condition  is  a  real  desire  to 
know  God,  but  when  God  meets  that  de- 
sire with  a  larger  vision  of  himself,  like 
Isaiah  in  the  temple  he  falls  on  his  face 
and  cries,  "Woe  is  me!  for  I  am  undone; 
because  I  am  a  man  of  unclean  lips,  and  I 
dwell  in  the  midst  of  a  people  of  unclean 
lips :  for  mine  eyes  have  seen  the  King, 
the  Lord  of  Hosts." 

A  great  mistake  is  often  made  in  deal- 
ing with  people  in  this  awakened  condi- 
tion. This  aroused  and  increased  interest 
is  sometimes  mistaken  for  conversion,  and 
as  a  result  of  this  mistake  at  the  begin- 
ning the  whole  religious  life  is  involved 
in  confusion  and  perplexity.  One  reason 
why  so  many  converts  do  not  ''hold  out" 
is  that  they  were  never  truly  converted. 
In  some  way  awakening  was  mistaken  for 
conversion,  and  they  were  left  in  a  peril- 


Spiritual  Awakening  55 

oils  condition.  We  can  trust  God  in  his 
grace  and  tender  mercy  to  carefully  watch 
over  such  misguided  ones,  but  that  will 
not  relieve  from  responsibility  the  unwise 
or  ignorant  spiritual  teachers  who  some- 
times become  more  interested  in  figures 
than  in  profound  spiritual  results.  But 
the  mistake  is  sometimes  very  innocently 
made.  One  of  the  great  benefits  of  the 
"mourners'  bench"  is  that  those  who  come 
out  from  their  seats  and  make  a  definite 
separation  from  their  old  selves  are  much 
less  likely  to  make  this  mistake,  and  much 
more  hkely  to  "come  through,"  than  are 
those  who  hold  up  their  hands,  or  sign  a 
card,  or  even  stand  up  for  prayers.  It 
cannot  be  emphasized  too  strongly  that  a 
desire  or  even  a  resolution  to  lead  a  new 
life  is  not  conversion  in  the  sense  of  a  res- 
cue from  sin.  The  desire  and  the  resolu- 
tion are  good  and  necessary,  but  they 
mark  a  stage  in  the  preparation  for  the 
rescue.  The  resolution  to  live  a  new  life 
will  bring  the  soul  face  to  face  with  God, 


56  Personal  Salvation 

and  if  persisted  in  will  lead  the  man  to  the 
rescue  from  sin.  Paul  did  not  make  the 
mistake  of  thinking  that  he  was  in  Rome 
when  he  came  to  the  "Three  Taverns," 
but  he  "thanked  God  and  took  courage," 
and  so  went  on  toward  Rome. 

This  mistake  produces  confusing  and 
sometimes  disastrous  results.  The  seeker 
has  been  told,  and  told  truly,  that  certain 
definite  effects  follow  conversion.  He 
does  not  find  these  results  in  his  own  ex- 
perience, and  is  very  likely  to  think  that 
the  Christian  experience  he  has  heard 
about  is  purely  imaginary.  This  miscon- 
ception may  easily  prevent  any  further 
work  of  the  Spirit  at  that  time,  and  on  ac- 
count of  the  blunder  that  opportunity  for 
rescue  is  lost.  Other  opportunities  will 
come,  but  they  do  not  excuse  the  blunder. 
Valuable  time  also  is  lost. 

Another  grave  error  growing  out  of 
this  mistake  is  not  uncommon.  Some  are 
faithful  to  the  resolution  to  lead  a  new 
life  and  are  brought  to  a  true  conversion 


Spiritual  Awakening  57 

later,  in  spite  of  the  bewilderment  grow- 
ing out  of  the  mistake.  Thinking  that 
they  had  been  converted  previously,  they 
call  the  true  conversion  the  "second  bless- 
ing" of  entire  sanctification,  thus  bringing 
confusion  into  their  own  experience  and 
greater  confusion  into  the  doctrine  of 
holiness.  This  treatise  stoutly  maintains 
the  doctrine  of  Christian  holiness  as  the 
second  goal  of  the  Christian  life.  By  the 
very  nature  of  the  case,  a  man  cannot  at- 
tain the  experience  of  Christian  holiness 
until  after  he  has  passed  through  the  ex- 
perience of  conversion,  by  which  he  be- 
comes loyal  to  Jesus  Christ.  Nevertheless 
it  is  very  evident  that  many  who  describe 
the  experience  of  sanctification  and  com- 
pare it  with  the  regenerate  state  are 
only  describing  conversion  and  com- 
paring it  with  the  state  of  awakened  in- 
terest, in  which  there  is  a  desire  and  an 
attempt  to  live  in  right  relations  with 
God.  For  this  reason  this  word  of  cau- 
tion is  introduced.     Parents,  preachers, 


58  Personal  Salvation 

teachers,  and  evangelists  are  exhorted  to 
be  careful  of  this  point  and  not  repeat  the 
mistake. 

The  first  profound  religious  awakening 
generally  occurs  in  the  period  of  adoles- 
cence, between  the  years  of  ten  and 
twenty.  To  children  in  Christian  homes, 
with  good  home  and  church  training,  it 
may,  and  often  does,  come  much  earlier. 
But  most  frequently  the  first  deep  spirit- 
ual awakening  occurs  in  the  period  of 
youth,  at  which  time  there  is  an  enlarged 
and  awakened  interest  in  all  the  relations 
of  life.  At  this  time  there  is  a  rapid  de- 
velopment of  the  moral  nature.  Some- 
times within  this  period  the  person  comes 
to  moral  freedom  and  is  conscious  of  his 
moral  responsibility.  The  moral  nature, 
as  well  as  the  social  nature,  seeks  to  find 
its  bearings  and  to  establish  itself  in  right 
relations.  To  the  youth  with  the  moral 
powers  developing  within  him  comes  the 
Holy  Spirit,  enlightening  the  mind,  in- 
structing the  moral  judgment,  gathering 


Spiritual  Awakening  59 

up  the  scattered  and  feeble  spiritual  pow- 
ers, and  centering  them  in  a  profound 
personal  interest  in  God  and  personal  sal- 
vation. This  period  of  awakened  interest 
presents  to  the  church  and  to  the  parents 
their  great  opportunity.  By  far  the 
greater  majority  of  Christians  were  con- 
verted before  they  were  twenty  years  of 
age.  The  parents,  the  pastor,  the  Sunday 
school  teacher,  should  all  give  attention  to 
this  fact,  and  see  that  those  under  their 
care  are  tenderly  cared  for  and  wisely  and 
carefully  led  to  Christ,  the  blessed  Lord 
and  Saviour,  immediately  upon  the  first 
awakening  of  interest  in  religious  things. 
The  Christian  teaching  and  training 
should  begin  in  early  childhood  with  the 
expectation  of  seeing  a  real  conversion 
and  a  settled  spiritual  life  before  the  age 
of  manhood  or  womanhood.  This  awak- 
ened condition  has  been  known  to  come  to 
children  not  more  than  six  years  of  age. 

Great   wisdom   is   required   in   dealing 
with  children  in  the  period  of  awakened 


60  Personal  Salvation 

religious  interest.  The  sensitive  tender- 
ness of  the  young-  heart  is  increased  by  the 
vague  unrest  of  the  youthful  period  and 
also  by  the  influence  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
gently  ministering  to  the  newly  born  spir- 
itual powers.  The  whole  attention  should 
be  directed  to  Christ  and  centered  upon 
him,  and  the  will  persuaded  to  accept  and 
trust  him.  There  should  be  no  morbid 
self-inspection  or  self-consciousness.  This 
is  not  the  time  for  a  discussion  of  total 
depravity  and  of  the  necessity  for  regen- 
eration. There  should  be  no  demand  for 
a  vivid  experience  or  a  dramatic  conver- 
sion. It  is  true  that  the  child  is  depraved, 
and  that  he  cannot  be  educated  into  the 
kingdom.  He  must  be  born  into  the  king- 
dom, but  a  natural,  normal  birth  under 
the  guidance  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is  not 
necessarily  violent.  Indeed,'  it  is  most 
likely  to  be  quiet  and  healthy  and  to  come 
"without  observation."  The  real  joy  of 
being  a  child  in  the  family  depends  alto- 
gether upon  the  vividness  and  strength  of 


Spiritual  Awakening  61 

the  present  filial  spirit,  and  not  at  all  upon 
the  painfulness  of  the  birth.  We  must 
not  expect  children  to  have  such  a  con- 
viction and  repentance  as  comes  to  old 
and  hardened  sinners.  The  young  need 
to  know  not  themselves,  but  Christ.  He 
should  be  presented  to  them  in  that  at- 
tractive and  lovely  personality  which  per- 
vades the  four  Gospels.  If  Christ  is  kept 
before  them,  and  they  are  taught  to  love 
him  and  follow  him  and  work  for  him. 
the  Holy  Spirit  will  gently  and  naturally 
work  within  their  hearts  the  miracle  of 
eternal  life. 

But  the  time  of  youth  is  not  the  only 
time  of  awakening.  At  many  other  times 
in  life  the  influence  of  the  church  and  of 
individuals,  the  bearing  of  the  man  him- 
self, and  the  enlightenment  by  the  Holy 
Spirit  lead  to  an  interested  awakened  con- 
dition which  is  to  be  followed  by  that 
great  upheaval  in  the  spiritual  life,  the 
conviction  of  sin  as  a  thing  against  the 
holy  God. 


62  Personal  Salvation 


CHAPTER  VI 

Conviction  of  Sin 

The  aim  of  Christian  experience  and 
training  is  to  bring  the  man  into  personal 
relation  with  the  holy  and  absolute  God. 
This  "personal  relation"  is  an  attitude  of 
filial  trust  and  love  and  obedience  in 
which  the  whole  man  recognizes  and  ac- 
cepts God  as  his  Father  and  is  conscious 
of  sonship  and  heirship  and  fellowship  in 
God's  holy  family.  Since  the  perfection 
of  manhood  lies  thus  in  a  personal  rela- 
tion toward  God,  the  man  must  be 
brought  to  a  realization  of  the  fact  that 
his  whole  life  and  conduct,  his  thoughts, 
feelings,  and  actions,  in  their  final  account 
are  to  be  judged  by  their  relation  to  the 
holy  God  rather  than  by  their  relation  to 
society,  to  civil  law,  to  self-respect,  or 
even  to  the  standard  set  up  by  the  moral 
ideal.     Even  conscience  must  at  last  ren- 


Conviction  of  Sin  63 

der  an  account  to  God.  The  deep  pur- 
pose of  the  conscience  is  to  teach  man  that 
God  has  rights  in  liim  and  demands  obe- 
dience, and  that  he  will  sometime  call  for 
a  settlement.  The  true  work  of  con- 
science is  much  deeper  than  to  get  the 
man  to  do  right.  The  demand  is  that  the 
man  do  right,  not  primarily  for  right's 
sake,  but  as  an  expression  of  his  willing 
obedience  toward  God.  The  deepest  pur- 
pose of  life  is  not  conduct,  hut  harmony 
with  the  holy  God.  This  profound  sense 
of  responsibility  to  God,  and  the  con- 
sciousness that  the  life  and  conduct,  the 
whole  mind  and  heart  and  will,  are  not  in 
the  proper  relation  to  him,  is  what  we 
mean  by  the  conviction  of  sin.  Convic- 
tion of  sin  therefore  implies  ( i )  a  vision 
of  God,  and  includes  (2) a  sense  of  sin  as 
a  thing  opposed  to  God,  and  (3)  a  feeling 
of  self-blame  for  the  lack  of  harmony 
with  God. 

I.  The    conviction    of    sin    implies    a 
vision  of  God.    The  aim  of  the  enlighten- 


64  Personal  Salvation 

ment  was  to  bring  to  the  man  a  true  con- 
ception of  God  and  to  train  his  faculties 
so  that  he  could  understand  the  vision 
when  it  came.  The  conception  of  God  is 
the  very  foundation  of  the  whole  spiritual 
structure.  The  man  who  builded  his 
house  upon  a  rock  builded  it  upon  a  great 
revelation  of  God.  It  matters  not  how 
bad  a  man  may  be.  he  can  be  lifted  out  of 
the  very  mouth  of  the  pit  if  he  can  get  a 
vision  of  God.  ^^'e  cannot  do  anything 
for  him  until  he  does  get  it.  The  spirit  of 
our  times  is  against  any  great  vision  of 
God.  The  Old  Testament  idea  of  God  is 
out  of  our  feeling,  and  our  vision  of 
Christ  stops  with  his  person  and  virtues 
and  does  not  reach  the  atonement.  We 
cannot  even  get  a  clear  vision  of  the  cruci- 
fixion. The  power  of  the  Gospel  is 
neither  in  its  severity  nor  in  its  mercy, 
but  in  the  two  combined.  The  thought  of 
God's  holiness  drives  the  sinner  into 
deeper  despair.  Some  very  eminent  re- 
ligious teachers  seem  to  be  in  great  fear 


Conviction  of  Sin  65 

that  some  one  will  get  hold  of  the  old- 
fashioned  idea  ihal  God  has  absolute 
rights  in  man.  and  that  God's  authority 
and  God's  word  are  supreme  and  inexor- 
able. It  will  be  a  sad  day  for  the  Chris- 
tian Church  if  it  should  lose  all  the  stern- 
ness and  strenuousness  of  the  Old  Testa- 
ment out  of  its  life  and  theology.  It  will 
have  to  travel  a  long  way  back  before  it 
can  meet  the  Lord  Jesus  at  Calvary  and 
receive  the  Gospel  message  from  his  lips. 

The  conception  or  vision  of  God  may 
be  very  weak  and  still  be  strong  enough 
to  make  the  man  feel  his  lack  of  harmony 
with  God.  Some  kind  of  a  revelation  of 
God  must  precede  every  true  conversion. 

2.  The  first  element  of  conviction  is  a 
perception  of  what  sin  is.  The  man  sees 
that  he  is  in  rebellion  against  God.  He 
feels  that  he  is  wrong,  not  because  he  has 
violated  his  conscience  or  broken  with  the 
commonly  accepted  standard  of  right,  but 
because  he  has  ofTended  God.  He  is  in  a 
desperate  condition  because  there  is  a  God 


66  Personal  Salvation 

and  because  God  has  rights  in  him.  God 
has  made  man,  and  given  him  a  free 
moral  nature,  and  must  govern  him  in  ac- 
cord with  that  nature,  but  God  has  rights 
in  a  man  just  as  he  has  in  a  worm.  When 
a  man  realizes  that  God  has  rights  in  him, 
and  demands  obedience  and  will  punish 
disobedience,  he  is  in  deep  despair,  and  no 
one  but  God  can  help  him  out.  He  holds 
himself  responsible  to  God  for  his  sins 
against  his  fellow-men.  He  may  have  to 
make  restitution,  but  the  restitution  does 
not  settle  the  matter,  since  the  real  sin  is 
against  God  and  restitution  to  the  fellow- 
man  still  leaves  God  to  be  settled  with. 
The  restitution  may  be  the  means  of 
bringing  on  the  conviction  of  sin.  When 
a  man  comes  to  himself,  and  gets  at  the 
real  center  of  his  own  soul,  he  sees  that 
the  real  responsibility  for  every  act  is  to 
God  and  the  final  settlement  must  be  made 
with  him.  This  is  the  profound  element 
in  conviction. 

3.  The  second  element  of  conviction  is 


Conviction  of  Sin  67 

self -blame.  The  man  realizes  his  per- 
sonal responsibility  and  blames  himself, 
and  himself  only,  for  his  sin.  He  sees 
that  the  sin  is  not  the  result  of  heredity, 
or  environment,  or  temperament,  or  the 
influence  of  friends  or  enemies.  It  is  the 
rebellion  of  his  own  will  against  God. 
There  is  small  hope  of  any  real  change  or 
reform  in  the  life  so  long  as  the  man  tries 
to  put  the  blame  on  some  one  else.  There 
is  great  hope  the  moment  the  man  frees 
himself  from  his  surroundings  and  holds 
himself  responsible.  The  vision  of  God, 
the  sense  of  sin,  and  the  feeling  of  self- 
blame  all  serve  to  put  the  man  in  a  very 
w^retched  condition,  God  alone  can  help 
him,  and  God  will  do  it  if  he  can  get  any 
opportunity  to  do  so. 

In  this  state  of  conviction  and  unrest 
the  person  is  hard  to  deal  with.  In  the 
awakened  state  everything  seemed  to  be 
progressing  finely.  Now  perhaps  the  man 
stays  away  from  church.  His  heart  is 
hard   and  unyielding.     He   sees   his   re- 


68  Personal  Salvation 

bellion  but  will  not  submit.  The  moment 
his  heart  begins  to  soften  he  begins  to 
pass  into  the  next  stage,  repentance.  Of 
course,  the  whole  procession  of  conditions 
preceding  and  during  conversion  may, 
and  often  does,  take  place  in  a  few  mo- 
ments, or  it  may  spread  over  several  days, 
or  even  weeks  and  months.  In  any  case 
the  conditions  and  order  of  events  here 
described  are  present  and  could  be  distin- 
guished if  all  the  facts  were  knov^'n. 

The  conviction  of  sin  is  a  work  of  the 
Holy  Spirit.  The  Holy  Spirit  chooses 
the  time  when  he  will  bring  the  soul  to  a 
realization  of  its  opposition  to  God  and 
then  forces  a  decision.  In  choosing  this 
time  for  conviction  the  Holy  Spirit  takes 
into  account  the  conditions  previously 
mentioned  as  preparations  for  conversion. 
The  church  and  the  individual  have 
power  to  bring  a  man  to  conviction  only 
as  they  have  present  with  them  the  power 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  When  the  church 
meets  the  conditions  of  true  worship,  as 


Conviction  of  Sin  69 

previously  stated,  then  there  is  present  in 
the  church  such  power  over  the  hearts  and 
consciences  of  men  that  they  are  brought 
face  to  face  with  God  and  are  convicted 
of  sin.  The  Holy  Spirit  is  always  pleased 
to  use  the  church  and  its  members  as  a 
means  of  convincing  the  world  of  sin,  and 
of  righteousness,  and  of  judgment  when- 
ever, by  obedience  to  the  conditions  of 
such  usefulness,  they  will  allow  him  to  do 
so.  A  man  can  also  bring  the  conviction 
upon  himself.  By  his  own  actions  and  his 
attitude  toward  the  truth  he  gives  the 
Holy  Spirit  opportunity  to  lead  him  to 
God.  A  man  may  hasten  the  conviction 
by  earnestly  striving  to  do  right.  Every 
right  action  brings  a  man  closer  to  God. 
Remembering  what  has  been  said  about 
the  vision  of  God  as  a  basis  for  convic- 
tion, let  us  listen  for  a  moment  to  Joseph 
Cook :  "It  is  a  fact  of  human  nature  that 
the  total  submission  of  the  will  to  con- 
science brings  into  the  soul  immediately 
a  sense  of  the  divine  approval  and  pres- 


70  Personal  Salvation 

ence  as  personal.  You  turn  upon  the  sky 
your  unarranged  telescope  at  random  and 
you  see  nothing.  Direct  it  properly,  but 
fail  to  arrange  the  lenses,  and  everything 
visible  through  the  tube  is  blurred.  But 
arrange  the  lenses  and  bring  the  telescope 
exactly  upon  the  star  or  upon  the  rising 
sun,  and  the  instant  there  is  perfect  ac- 
cord betw^een  the  line  of  the  axis  of  the 
tube  and  the  line  of  the  ray  from  the  star 
or  the  orb  of  day,  that  instant,  but  never 
before,  the  image  of  the  star  or  sun  starts 
up  in  the  chamber  of  the  instrument.  Just 
so  I  claim  it  to  be  the  fact  of  experience 
that  whenever  we  submit  utterly,  affec- 
tionately, irreversibly  to  the  best  we  know 
— that  is,  to  the  innermost  holiest  of  con- 
science— at  that  instant,  and  never  before, 
there  flashes  through  us,  with  quick, 
splendid,  unexpected  illumination,  a 
Power  not  ourselves.  You  cannot  have 
that  inner  witness  until  you  have  that  ex- 
terior and  interior  conformity  to  con- 
science, but  whoever  has  these  will  know 


Conviction  of  Sin  71 

by  the  inner  light  that  God  is  with  him  in 
a  sense  utterly  unknown  before.  An  ut- 
terly holy  choice  brings  with  it  a  Presence 
we  dare  not  name.  So  much  in  conscience 
is  known  to  be  fixed  natural  law."  (Bos- 
ton Monday  Lectures,  "Conscience,"  p. 
1 39. )  When  by  a  holy  choice  man  brings 
into  his  heart  the  presence  of  God,  that 
presence  demands  a  new  choice  with  re- 
gard to  itself.  Hence,  even  though  a 
man  be  perfectly  true  to  conscience,  yet 
when  that  conformity  to  conscience 
brings  a  vision  of  God  the  man  will  feel  a 
loss  that  cannot  be  met  until  he  makes  a 
new  choice,  accepting  God,  and  choosing 
right  thereafter  as  an  expression  of  har- 
mony with  him.  God  is  greater  than  con- 
science. The  best  that  conscience  can  do 
is  to  expand  the  ideal  until  we  come  face 
to  face  with  the  holy  God.  When  by  a 
change  of  attitude  he  is  chosen  he  still 
uses  conscience  to  guide  our  steps  and 
bring  us  nearer  to  himself.  It  is  very 
probable   that   Paul   came  to  conviction 


72  Personal   Salvation 

through  the  activity  of  conscience.  He 
started  to  keep  the  moral  law,  and  kept  it 
so  well  that  he  soon  realized  that  right- 
eousness was  not  in  conformity  to  a 
moral  standard  but  was  a  disposition  of 
the  heart  and  will,  so  he  had  to  call  upon 
Christ  to  deliver  him  from  the  body  of 
this  death.  Some  men,  when  they  come 
to  a  realization  of  the  fact  that  they  can- 
not be  good  without  God's  help,  refuse  to 
make  the  surrender  and.  giving  up  all  at- 
tempts to  secure  "righteousness  in  the  in- 
ward parts."  they  fall  back  upon  a  mere 
outward  conformity  to  an  external  stand- 
ard. They  are  moral  backsliders,  and 
while  they  may  be  very  respectable  citi- 
zens they  have  not  that  righteousness 
which  pertains  to  the  kingdom  of  God. 
Such  persons  present  the  very  hardest 
problem  with  which  the  church  has  to 
deal. 

But  the  Holy  Spirit  is  not  dependent 
upon  the  church  or  the  individual.  Very 
often  he  forces  the  conviction  of  sin  upon 


Conviction  of  Sin  73 

a  person  without  any  apparent  relation  to 
the  situation.  Suddenly  the  man  is 
brought  to  a  conviction  of  his  rebelHon 
against  the  holy  God  and  is  in  deep  des- 
pair on  account  of  his  sins.  The  fervent 
prayer  of  a  friend  may  influence  the 
Spirit  to  bring  conviction  on  a  sinner. 
Every  person  in  the  world  who  comes  to 
the  age  of  responsibility  is  brought  by 
the  Holy  Spirit  to  a  sense  of  his  need  of 
an  harmonious  personal  relation  with 
God. 

The  conviction  of  sin  which  has  just 
been  described  is  that  of  a  full-grown  and 
responsible  person  who  has  continued  in 
rebellion  against  God.  The  conviction 
that  comes  in  childhood  or  in  early  youth 
has  the  same  elements,  but  they  are  not  so 
pronounced.  But  even  in  children  the 
sense  of  sin  as  against  God  and  the  per- 
sonal responsibility  may  be  very  vivid. 
Primarily  the  conviction  of  sin  is  the  re- 
alization that  the  present  life  is  not  in 
proper  relation  and  attitude  toward  God. 


74  Personal  Salvation 

The  situation  can  be  very  nicely  illus- 
trated by  the  social  relation.  The  child 
sometime  in  his  development  finds  that  as 
an  individual  he  is  not  in  the  proper  rela- 
tion to  society.  At  first  the  self  occupies 
the  whole  attention,  but  with  the  develop- 
ment of  soul  and  body  the  youth  finds 
himself  in  a  new  world  and  he  must  adapt 
himself  to  the  new  conditions.  He  sees 
that  the  perfect  life,  the  life  of  freedom 
and  content,  is  not  that  of  an  isolated  in- 
dividual, but  that  of  a  member  of  society. 
He  will  fall  in  love,  and  marry  and  have 
a  home  of  his  own.  He  will  probably 
make  some  amusing  blunders  and  perhaps 
some  troublesome  mistakes  in  his  efforts 
to  adapt  himself  to  the  situation,  but  he  is 
going  in  the  right  direction.  This  feeling 
of  individual  restlessness,  this  desire  for 
companions  and  family,  may  very  proper- 
ly be  called  the  social  conviction.  If  the 
youth  surrenders  himself  in  loving  obedi- 
ence to  the  laws  of  social  development,  if 
he  sacrifices  self  for  society,  he  becomes 


Conviction  of  Sin  75 

naturally  a  happy  member  of  the  social 
organization.  Without  any  great  break 
with  himself  or  with  his  former  life  he  be- 
comes a  member  of  the  great  brotherhood 
of  man;  he  is  socially  righteous  and  has 
a  proper  relation  to  his  surroundings.  But 
if  he  sets  up  his  own  selfish  will  against 
the  demand  of  the  brotherhood,  and  re- 
fuses to  adjust  himself  to  the  social  situa- 
tion, he  becomes  an  outcast  and  a  crim- 
inal. He  makes  himself  a  social  sinner 
and  is  socially  lost.  By  and  by  another 
conviction  of  his  inharmonious  state  will 
come  to  him,  and  very  likely  it  will  be  a 
violent  conviction.  It  ought  to  be  violent. 
So  with  the  religious  conviction.  In  child- 
hood or  youth,  as  the  powers  develop  and 
the  soul  awakens,  there  comes  a  profound 
consciousness  that  the  soul  is  not  at  rest, 
and  that  it  must  adapt  itself  to  God  and 
his  demands.  This  was  discussed  more 
fully  in  the  last  chapter.  Now,  if  the  situ- 
ation is  accepted,  and  an  earnest,  serious 
attempt  is  made  to  come  into  the  proper 


76  Personal  Salvation 

relation  to  God,  the  child  will  come  nat- 
urally and  easily  into  a  state  of  conscious 
acceptance  with  God,  and  a  life  of  trust 
and  obedience  will  follow.  The  child 
needs  religious  training  and  religious  ac- 
tivity. The  Holy  Spirit  will  attend  to  the 
regeneration  and  the  depravity  and  all  the 
rest.  It  is  folly  to  expect  the  same  violent 
feelings  in  a  child  that  we  have  a  right  to 
expect  in  a  hardened  sinner.  The  savages 
and  the  heathen  have  recognized  the  re- 
ligious awakening  and  the  religious 
nature  of  the  young,  and  have  sometimes 
met  the  situation  with  better  religious 
training  and  care  than  has  the  Christian 
Church.  "Remember  now  thy  Creator  in 
the  days  of  thy  youth"  is  profound  wis- 
dom for  all  ages. 

The  period  of  conviction  is  a  time  of 
hardened  heart.  The  fight  is  on.  and  so 
long  as  it  lasts  the  soul  will  not  give  in. 
will  not  surrender  to  God.  will  not  submit 
at  the  point  of  rebellion.  If  the  soul  con- 
tinues rebellious  the  conviction  weakens 


Conviction  of  Sin  77 

and  finally  disappears.  .\  willful  sin  may 
cause  it  to  leave  all  at  once.  Between  the 
conviction  and  the  repentance  is  the  gra- 
cious invitation,  to  which  we  next  give 

attention. 
6 


78  Personal  Salvation 


CHAPTER  VII 

The  Invitation 

God  meets  the  despair  and  self-blame 
of  conviction  with  an  offer  of  pardon  and 
a  gracious  invitation  to  accept  Christ  and 
become  a  member  of  God's  family.  When 
it  is  remembered  that  conviction  implies 
a  vision  of  the  great  and  holy  God,  and  a 
realization  that  sin  is  a  personal  affront 
to  him,  it  will  be  easily  seen  that  the  sin- 
ner's case  is  entirely  hopeless  unless  God 
comes  to  him  with  an  offer  of  pardon. 
In  such  a  situation  a  great  revolution  is 
produced  in  the  sinner's  condition  when 
he  realizes  that  God  has  come.  The  case 
is  no  longer  hopeless,  for,  since  God  is 
gracious,  if  the  sinner  will  do  his  part  a 
complete  restoration  is  possible.  The 
great  fundamental  law  of  reconciliation  is 
that  the  innocent  party  must  make  the 
first  sacrifice  and  first  move  toward  a  set- 


The  Invitation  79 

tlement.  The  case  is  hopeless,  so  far  as 
any  real  reconciliation  is  concerned,  until 
the  offended  one  makes  known  in  some 
way  his  willingness  to  forgive  and  pro- 
vides opportunity  for  a  restoration  to 
peace  and  fellowship.  The  returning 
prodigal  would  not  have  fallen  on  his  fa- 
ther's neck  and  poured  out  his  soul  in  a 
plea  for  forgiveness  and  love  if  his  father 
had  met  him  with  a  cold,  unbending  dig- 
nity and  formally  assigned  him  to  a  place 
in  the  household.  The  father  must  run  to 
meet  him  and  pour  out  his  heart  before 
the  returning  son  could  have  a  right  spirit 
renewed  within  him  and  have  the  joy  of 
his  sonship  restored.  The  father  must  be 
a  father  before  the  son  can  be  a  son.  In 
the  life  and  death  of  his  only  begotten 
Son  God  has  made  the  sacrifice  and  has 
come  to  meet  the  sinner  with  an  offer  of 
pardon  and  restoration.  In  this  particu- 
lar the  atonement  is  a  moral  influence;  but 
this  provision  for  reconciliation  is  not  the 
whole  of  the  atonement,  nor  does  it  touch 


80  Personal  Salvation 

the  profoundest  depth  of  the  human  ob- 
stacle to  forgiveness. 

This  realization  that  God  is  gracious 
and  will  forgive  enlarges  the  sinner's  con- 
ception of  God  and  thus  increases  the  self- 
blame.  The  conception  of  God's  holiness 
and  righteousness  and  justice  produces  a 
powerful  sense  of  despair  and  ill  desert 
from  which  there  is  no  escape.  When  the 
conception  is  enlarged  to  a  vision  of  God's 
love  as  expressed  in  Christ  the  sinner 
feels  that  God  is  inviting  him  to  return 
and  hope  arises.  He  had  felt  that  God 
could  never  forgive  him,  but  now  that 
God  has  come  with  such  tenderness  and 
mercy  the  sinner  is  profoundly  stirred. 
The  knowledge  of  God's  love  increases 
the  sorrow  and  self-blame,  but  his  grief 
has  become  hopeful  even  as  it  grew  more 
bitter.  The  man  knows  that  it  will  come 
out  right  if  he  will  do  his  part.  Thus  the 
Holy  Spirit  lovingly  helps  the  man  on. 

The  awakened  and  growing  religious 
interest  of  the  child  or  youth  is  met  with 


The  In^'itation  81 

the  same  tender  invitation  to  come  to  God 
and  grow  up  into  a  life  of  conscious  ac- 
ceptance with  him.  In  presenting  the  in- 
vitation the  Holy  Spirit  generally  uses 
human  means  and  occasions,  but  the  sin- 
ner cannot  feel  the  force  of  the  words  of 
the  invitation  until  the  Holy  Spirit  so  in- 
terprets them  to  him  that  he  really  grasps 
the  idea  that  God  is  calling  him. 

With  the  invitation  and  offer  of  par- 
don the  preparation  is  complete.  God  has 
brought  the  person  squarely  up  to  the 
place  of  rescue  and  thoroughly  prepared 
him  for  the  decision.  Man  has  not 
stumbled  upon  the  place  by  accident  or  in 
ignorance.  God  has  done  all  he  can  do 
and  not  destroy  the  man's  freedom.  God 
cannot  do  any  more  for  him  in  another 
life  or  another  probation.  God  has  emp- 
tied himself,  has  done  his  best  work.  He 
cannot  do  so  well  in  another  probation, 
even  if  he  decided  to  give  one.  God  has 
brought  to  bear  upon  him  the  influence  of 
individuals,  of  the  church,  and  of  his  own 


82  Personal  Salvation 

conscience.  The  Holy  Spirit  has  enlight- 
ened him  and  given  him  an  interest  in 
personal  salvation.  God  has  revealed  his 
ow^n  nature  and  holiness  to  him,  has 
shown  him  the  nature  of  his  sin  and  its 
consequences,  and  brought  him  to  see  that 
he  is  personally  responsible  for  the  sad 
condition.  There  is  nothing  in  the  situa- 
tion for  which  he  does  not  blame  himself. 
He  sees  that  he  is  not  held  accountable  for 
ignorance,  or  depravity,  but  only  for  his 
own  willful  disobedience.  God  invites 
him  to  come  and  find  rest  and  peace,  in- 
vites him  with  all  the  force  of  the  divine 
love  as  exhibited  on  the  cross.  The  great 
stream  of  rescue  is  flowing  at  his  feet. 
Will  he  plunge  in  and  be  made  whole? 
The  man  must  decide.  He  can  harden  his 
heart,  and  turn  away,  or  he  can  open  his 
heart  to  receive  all  that  God  has  for  him. 
The  instant  that  the  heart  begins  to  soften 
and  melt  the  conversion  Is  begun.  Man 
meets  God's  Invitation  by  a  repentance 
that  will  speedily  pass  Into  faith. 


The  Hour  of  Decision  83 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  Hour  of  Decision 

We  have  carefully  traced  the  history  of 
the  man  as  he  is  prepared  for  the  rescue 
from  sin,  and  noticed  the  states  and  feel- 
ings through  which  he  has  passed.  In  the 
work  of  preparation  the  man  has  been 
largely  passive.  The  decisions  of  his  own 
will  have  had  some  influence  in  the  prepa- 
ration, but  the  great  work  has  been 
wrought  by  powers  and  influences  outside 
of  the  man  himself.  But  now  we  have 
come  to  the  place  where  the  man  must  de- 
cide. God  cannot  carry  him  any  farther 
in  the  way  of  rescue  unless  the  man 
definitely  decides  to  travel  that  road.  Be- 
fore passing  to  the  next  step  in  the  plan 
of  rescue  it  will  be  profitable  to  discuss 
briefly  the  conditions  which  surround  a 
man  in  the  hour  of  decision.  In  that  hour 
the  man  is  perfectly  free  to  choose  any 


84  Personal  Salvation 

one  of  the  iriotives  that  appeal  to  him. 
The  man  holds  himself  responsible  for  his 
choice,  the  Bible  holds  him  responsible 
and  society  holds  him  responsible,  so  he 
must  be  free  to  choose  as  he  will. 

No  man  ever  went  down  to  eternal 
death  on  general  principles.  Man's  des- 
tiny is  not  decided  by  a  comparison  of  the 
good  and  the  bad  in  his  life.  God  does 
not  say  of  a  man,  as  we  so  often  say,  "On 
the  whole,  there  was  more  good  than  evil 
in  his  life."  The  man  is  lost  because  at  a 
certain  definite  time  in  his  life  he  com- 
mitted certain  definite  acts  of  sin  which 
he  knew  to  be  sin,  and  which  he  could 
have  avoided  if  he  had  wanted  to  keep 
from  doing  them.  The  man  himself  knew 
that  he  was  doing  the  forbidden  thing  and 
he  did  it  on  purpose.  He  does  not  blame 
anyone  but  himself,  nor  put  the  responsi- 
bility in  any  way  upon  anyone  else.  With 
his  eyes  wide  open  and  his  faculties  alert 
he  said,  "This  is  the  thing  I  choose;  this 
is  the  thing  I  will  be."    Character  may  be 


The  Hour  of  Decision  85 

of  slow  growth.  It  may  be  determined, 
to  some  extent  at  least,  by  circumstances. 
But  the  crises  that  fix  the  soul's  destiny 
are  determined  alone  by  the  man  and  his 
God.  At  the  moment  when  the  choice 
must  be  made  there  is  nothing  in  all  the 
universe,  so  far  as  that  man  is  concerned, 
except  himself  and  God.  He  must  obey 
or  disobe}'.  He  stands  in  the  presence  of 
two  or  more  possible  choices.  The  holy 
God  approves  one  of  them  and  disap- 
proves the  rest,  and  the  man  knows  it. 
Nothing  can  by  any  possible  means  in- 
fluence the  decision  except  the  man  him- 
self. Heredity,  depravity,  environment, 
education,  habit,  former  choices,  charac- 
ter, not  one  of  these  can  have  the  least 
influence  in  the  matter  until  after  the 
choice  is  made.  They  may  determine  the 
form  of  the  crises;  they  can  do  nothing 
more.  For  the  time  the  man  separates 
himself  from  all  external  things,  from  all 
his  possessions  and  accumulations  and 
acquirements.     None  of  the  things  that 


86  Personal  Salvation 

appeal  to  the  man  and  tempt  him  are  a 
part  of  his  real  personality,  and  they  can- 
not have  any  power  over  him  until  he  ac- 
cepts them  and  identifies  himself  with 
them.  Thus  it  is  that  every  man,  regard- 
less of  conditions  and  circumstances,  has 
the  same  chance,  and  every  man  has  a  fair 
chance,  and  every  man  has  the  best 
chance.  He  has  the  only  chance  there  is. 
That  is  a  chance  to  stand,  not  between  the 
evil  and  the  good,  but  between  the  evil 
and  God,  and  choose  one  or  the  other. 
The  habits,  the  inherited  appetites,  the 
fostered  passions,  the  total  suction  of  the 
awful  whirlpool  of  sin,  may  hold  him 
with  a  power  that  he  cannot  of  himself 
resist,  but  when  the  great  test  comes  he 
can  rid  himself  of  the  whole  wicked 
crowd  by  throwing  himself  into  the  arms 
of  the  loving  God  and  crying,  "O  God,  I 
choose  thee;  help  me  or  I  perish !"  If  the 
man  chooses  God  and  stands  by  his  choice 
God  is  responsible  for  his  being  good. 
When  the  man  chooses  God,  God  sends 


The  Hour  of  Decision  87 

into  his  soul  such  an  infusion  of  his  own 
Hfe  and  power  as  will  renew  and  trans- 
form it  and  give  him  power  over  every 
form  of  sin.  The  man  identifies  himself 
with  God.  God  identifies  himself  with 
that  man.  "In  all  these  things  we  are 
more  than  conquerors  through  him  that 
loved  us.  For  I  am  persuaded,  that 
neither  death,  nor  life,  nor  angels,  nor 
principalities,  nor  powers,  nor  things 
present,  nor  things  to  come,  nor  height, 
nor  depth,  nor  any  other  creature,  shall 
be  able  to  separate  us  from  the  love  of 
God,  which  is  in  Christ  Jesus  our  Lord." 

If  the  man  chooses  the  sin  he  does  more 
than  reject  God.  He  identifies  himself 
with  the  evil  and  puts  himself  in  line  with 
his  depraved  nature  and  gives  himself 
willingly  to  the  whole  crowd  of  evil  forces 
that  drag  him  down  to  eternal  death.  He 
rejects  God  and  chooses  them.  He  is  just 
as  responsible  for  what  they  do  with  him 
as  if  he  had  made  them  all  himself. 

After  the  choice  is  made  the  previous 


88  Personal  Salvation 

choices  and  education  and  environment 
become  factors  of  the  situation.  The  kind 
of  man  he  was  previous  to  the  choice  will 
influence  his  equipment  for  future  work. 
Take,  for  example,  two  young-  men  of 
equal  age.  One  of  them  has  been  brought 
up  in  a  Christian  home  witli  Christian 
training;  he  has  habits  of  prayer  and 
Bible  reading  and  church  attendance;  he 
is  acquainted  with  Christian  people  and  is 
familiar  with  Christian  work.  The  other 
young  man  is  a  child  of  the  slums,  with 
habits  of  stealing  and  swearing  and 
drinking  and  lewdness;  he  knows  noth- 
ing of  Christian  thought  and  work.  The 
training  of  the  first  young  man  will  not 
make  it  easier  for  him  to  choose  God ;  the 
training  of  the  second  will  not  make  it 
harder.  In  that  respect  neither  has  the 
advantage;  they  are  equal.  But  if  the 
first  young  man  accepts  God,  see  what  an 
equipment  he  has  for  Christian  work.  He 
is  well  prepared  to  enter  into  immediate 
and  useful   Christian  service.      If  he  ac- 


The  Hour  of  Decision  89 

cepts  the  sin  he  will  have  tu  hght  all  his 
decent  habits.  If  the  second  young-  man 
accepts  God  all  his  former  life  and  habits 
must  be  overcome,  and  until  they  are 
overcome  he  cannot  do  much  Christian 
work.  If  he  decides  with  the  sin  he  finds 
himself  well  prepared  to  enter  into  all 
forms  of  sin  and  wickedness.  But  in  the 
hour  of  decision  neither  has  the  advant- 
age. A  man  is  lost  because  on  a  certain 
definite  occasion  he  rejected  God  and  de- 
cided to  do  a  certain  definite  sinful  thing. 
There  will  be  no  vagueness  about  it.  The 
man  and  all  his  friends  w^ill  understand  it. 
No  one  will  wonder  why  he  is  in  such  a 
sad  plight.  No  one  will  complain  of  the 
harshness  of  divine  justice. 

In  a  Christian  land  every  man  must  be 
brought  squarely  up  to  the  place  where  he 
must  accept  or  refuse  the  divine  rescue 
provided  by  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and  no 
man  is  lost  until  he  completely  and  finally 
rejects  God  and  the  rescue.  It  is  true  that 
a  man  is  not  saved  until  he  has  accepted 


90  Personal  Salvation 

Christ.  It  is  equally  true  that  a  man  is 
not  lost  until  he  rejects  Christ.  His  des- 
tiny is  an  open  question  until  he  decides 
it.  For  men  in  heathen  lands  and  for  all 
men  who  do  not  come  under  the  influence 
of  the  Gospel  the  spirit  of  the  test  is  ex- 
actly the  same,  although  it  differs  greatly 
in  form.  There  is  a  real  test,  and  every 
man  has  a  chance  to  decide  what  he  will 
be.  God  will  take  care  of  all  the  rest 
when  once  the  decision  is  finally  made. 

In  bringing  this  crisis  upon  a  man  God 
selects  a  time  when  the  man  is  best  pre- 
pared to  accept  him.  God  knows  how 
many  tests  are  necessary  to  thoroughly 
try  the  man,  and  he  prepares  the  man  for 
these  tests  and  does  all  he  can  to  make  it 
easy  for  him  to  accept  God  and  hard  for 
him  to  accept  sin.  God  brings  to  bear 
upon  the  man  all  the  pressure  he  can 
stand  and  remain  free.  No  man  will  be 
lost  if  anything  can  save  him. 

In  our  study  of  personal  salvation  we 
have  come  to  the  hour  of  decision.     The 


The  Hour  of  Decision  91 

man  has  been  brought  face  to  face  with 
God  and  face  to  face  with  his  sin.  God 
stands  with  outstretched  arms  and  loving 
voice  inviting  the  man  to  accept  him. 
The  man  must  decide.  He  must  do  some- 
thing with  God's  invitation.  In  repent- 
ance the  man  prepares  himself  for  the 
great  decision  which  completes  the  act  of 
faith  and  unites  the  man  with  God.  Re- 
pentance is  really  the  beginning  of  that 
decision.  We  cannot  make  too  emphatic 
the  fact  that  the  decision  is  not  alone  a 
choice  of  right.  It  is  a  choice  of  the  per- 
sonal God,  and  of  right  as  an  expression 
of  harmony  with  him. 


92  Personal  Salvation 


CHAPTER  IX 

Repentance 

In  conversion,  as  in  the  preparation, 
there  is  a  human  and  a  divine  element. 
God  and  man  v\^ork  together  to  secure  the 
rescue  from  sin.  When  God  has  revealed 
himself  to  the  sinner,  and  has  convinced 
him  of  sin  and  has  invited  him  to  forsake 
his  sin  and  to  come  back  to  God.  God  has 
done  all  that  he  can  do  until  the  man  does 
something.  The  human  elements  of  con- 
version are  repentance  and  faith.  The 
divine  elements  are  justification,  regener- 
ation, and  adoption  into  God's  family. 
This  outline  of  conversion  is  valuable  for 
clearness  and  as  an  aid  to  Bible  study. 
While  every  con\'ersion  may  not  conform 
to  the  plan  in  every  respect,  the  lack  of 
the  conformity  lies  in  the  lack  of  definite- 
ness  in  the  conversion  rather  than  in  the 
rio-idness  of  the  outline.     In  each  conver- 


Repentance  93 

sion  there  are  personal  elements  whicli 
give  emphasis  to  some  particular  phase  of 
experience.  But  ex-en  with  these  personal 
elements  present  the  central  facts  of  the 
rescue  are  the  same.  The  outline  is  not 
mechanical  or  factitious.  It  is  not  a 
superimposed  theory,  but  an  analysis  of 
the  facts  which  really  occur  in  every  res- 
cue from  sin.  .\s  the  time  required  for 
the  completion  of  conversion  depends 
upon  the  man  and  his  surroundings,  it 
naturally  results  that  some  conversions 
are  hard  to  analyze  and  the  man  himself 
may  not  know  just  where  he  stands.  The 
important  thing  for  a  man  to  know  is 
whether  or  not  at  this  present  moment 
he  loves  God,  and  hates  sin.  and  finds  joy 
in  God's  house  and  among  God's  people. 

Conviction  is  the  self-blame  which  re- 
sults from  a  realization  of  what  God  is 
and  what  his  rights  are  in  us. 

This  self-blame  is  tenderly  met  by  the 
Holy  Spirit  in  invitation. 

Conviction    and    invitation    form    the 


94  Personal  Salvation 

basis  for  repentance,  which  is  a  personal 
sorrow  for  sin  as  a  thing  against  God. 
Closely  analyzed,  repentance  has  two 
features  :  ( i )  Contrition,  a  broken  heart; 
and  (2)  aversion  to  sin,  a  hatred  of  all 
sin  as  ungodly. 

I.  The  first  movement  in  repentance  is 
contrition,  or  the  softening  of  the  hard, 
stubborn,  rebellious  heart.  God's  love 
and  tenderness  expressed  in  the  invitation 
softens  the  hard  heart  and  puts  the  man 
in  a  state  where  God  can  do  more  for 
him.  Behind  this  softening  of  the  heart 
there  is  an  act  of  the  will.  The  man  must 
submit  to  God.  Even  though  the  ability 
to  repent  be  a  gift  of  the  Holy  Spirit  the 
man  is  still  responsible.  If  God  gives  the 
man  ability  to  repent  he  must  use  that 
ability.  Whatever  is  necessary  for  God 
to  do  he  does.  Man  has  the  power  to  sub- 
mit to  God  and  soften  his  heart.  It  mat- 
ters not  how  he  got  the  power.  The 
question  is.  Will  he  use  it?  The  way  to 
submit  is  to  submit.    God  cannot  do  any- 


Repentance  95 

thing  for  the  man  until  the  man  softens 
his  heart,  is  in  a  teachable  and  humble 
state,  and  will  allow  the  Spirit  to  lead  him 
into  a  complete  committal  of  himself  to 
God.  The  change  of  attitude  in  a  peni- 
tent is  exactly  identical  with  a  change  that 
can  readily  be  observed  in  a  rebellious 
child.  At  first  the  child  is  stubborn  and 
willful,  and  refuses  to  submit,  but  if  he  is 
carefully  dealt  with  he  will  soon  give  up, 
and  the  broken-hearted,  contrite  state 
which  follows  presents  to  the  parents  a 
splendid  opportunity  to  secure  loving  obe- 
dience and  to  bind  the  child  more  closely 
to  themselves.  Repentance  begins  with  a 
broken  and  a  contrite  heart  in  which  there 
is  a  deep  sorrow  for  sin  as  rebellion 
against  God. 

2.  In  addition  to  the  personal  sorrow 
for  sin  there  is  also  aversion  toward  the 
personal  sins  and  toward  all  sin  in  gen- 
eral. The  rnan  begins  to  loathe  that 
which  he  once  loved.  This  change  of 
feeling  toward  sin  is  not  simply  aversion 


96  Personal  Salvation 

to  sin  because  of  its  inherent  meanness 
and  vileness  and  ugliness,  but  a  loathing 
of  sin  because  it  is  a  personal  affront  to 
God.  The  meanest  thing  about  sin  is  its 
ungodliness.  This  aversion  toward  sin 
is  a  fundamental  part  of  all  true  repent- 
ance. The  man  who  has  the  right  spirit 
never  boasts  of  his  past  sins.  He  does  not 
like  to  talk  about  them.  The  remember- 
ance  of  them  is  grievous  unto  him.  He 
loathes  and  hates  his  whole  sinful  life. 
He  is  sad  whenever  he  thinks  of  it. 
There  is  something  very  shallow  about 
the  man  who  boasts  that  when  he  was  a 
sinner  he  was  a  very  great  sinner  indeed. 
The  repentance  which  is  a  "godly  sorrow, 
Avorking  repentance  unto  salvation,"  car- 
ries with  it  a  keen  aversion  to  sin,  and  a 
feeling  of  great  sadness  whenever  the 
former  sins  come  to  mind. 

The  Christian  never  loses  the  repentant 
spirit.  The  contrite  heart  and  the  aver- 
sion are  always  with  him.  His  growth  in 
grace  and  his  acquirement  of  holiness  are 


Repentance  97 

dependent  upon  a  continued  attitude  of 
personal  sorrow  on  account  of  sin.  Re- 
pentance is  the  foundation  of  all  our  in- 
tercourse with  Gofl. 

In  true  repentance  the  sin  is  considered 
simply  in  its  relation  to  God.  Hence  the 
necessity  for  a  vision  of  God  and  a  con- 
viction of  sin  as  a  preparation  for  repent- 
ance. The  man  is  not  ready  to  decide 
until  he  has  these.  Without  them  he  can- 
not do  anything  with  himself  in  the  way 
of  rescue  from  sin.  Without  the  true  re- 
pentance God  cannot  do  anything  with 
him.  God's  aim  is  not  simpl}'  to  make 
men  comfortable.  It  is  much  deeper  than 
that.  God  is  trying  to  get  men  to  be 
right,  even  though  for  a  while  he  must 
make  them  uncomfortable.  Unless  great 
care  is  taken  we  are  very  likely  to  get  a 
false  situation  and  a  false  repentance.  A 
man  may  be  all  broken  up  for  fear  he  will 
be  found  out,  or  he  may  dread  the  effects 
of  his  sin.  In  many  ways  he  may  get  a 
false  situation.     Repentance  is  not  fear  of 


98  Personal  Salvation 

detection  or  of  punishment;  it  is  not 
wounded  self-love  nor  stricken  pride;  it 
is  not  vexation  and  annoyance  with  our- 
selves that  we  have  been  so  weak;  it  is 
not  chagrin  nor  mortification,  not  self- 
reproach  nor  a  hurt  to  our  self-respect; 
it  is  not  a  fit  of  low  spirits  and  self-resent- 
ment because  we  have  done  wrong;  it  is 
not  the  condemnation  of  conscience.  All 
of  these  may  make  a  man  very  uncomfort- 
able, but  they  are  not  repentance.  The 
penitent  forgets  all  these,  forgets  himself, 
forgets  his  liability  to  punishment,  and 
considers  only  that  he  has  offended  God. 
It  was  not  until  the  Lord  turned  and 
looked  upon  Peter  that  Peter  went  out 
and  wept  bitterly.  ''It  is  God  looking  into 
the  sinner's  face  that  has  introduced  a 
Christian  element  into  the  human  sorrow 
for  sin.  And  Paul,  in  making  the  Chris- 
tian vocabulary,  had  to  coin  a  word  which 
was  strange  to  all  the  philosophies  of  the 
world  then,  and  is  so  still,  when  he  joined 
the  conceptions  of  God  and  sorrow  into 


Repentance  99 

one  and  told  us  of  the  godly  sorrow  which 
had  the  marvelous  virtue  of  working  a 
repentance  not  to  be  repented  of.  And  it 
is  this  new  and  sacred  sorrow  which 
comes  to  sinful  men  as  often  as  the  Lord 
turns  and  looks  upon  their  life;  it  is  this 
which  adds  the  penitential  incense  of  true 
penitence  to  the  sacrifice  of  a  broken  and 
contrite  heart.  That  was  a  great  distinc- 
tion which  Luke  brings  out  in  the  prodi- 
gal's life  between  coming  to  himself  and 
coming  to  his  father.  So  we  are  always 
coming  to  ourselves.  We  are  always  find- 
ing out,  like  the  prodigal,  what  miserable 
bargains  we  have  made.  But  it  is  only 
when  we  come  to  our  Father  that  we  can 
get  them  undone  and  the  real  debt  dis- 
charged" (Henry  Drummond,  The  Ideal 
Life). 

Sometimes  a  disturbed  sinner  is  petted 
and  brought  into  the  church  without  any 
real  Christian  experience.  This  is  a  great 
mistake.  It  is  not  our  place  to  comfort  a 
man  in  sin.    We  can  point  him  to  Christ, 


100  Personal  Salvation 

and  try  to  get  him  to  see  God  and  hear 
the  tender  voice.  It  may  be  that  the 
glimpse  of  God  will  plunge  him  a  hun- 
dredfold deeper  in  distress.  If  so,  we 
have  done  the  best  thing  for  him.  While 
repentance  is  a  deep  sorrow  it  is  also 
hopeful.  The  stricken  soul  begins  to  see 
a  way  out,  the  light  begins  to  shine  in  the 
darkness.  All  through  the  stage  of  re- 
pentance the  enlightenment  and  convic- 
tion and  invitation  of  the  Holy  Spirit  are 
going  on.  While  the  man  is  repenting 
the  Spirit  is  preparing  him  for  the  next 
step,  which  is  the  real  crisis  in  the  rescue. 
As  the  sorrow  deepens  the  Saviour  ap- 
pears with  a  thousand  forms  of  beauty, 
full  of  love  and  mercy.  Each  look  at  the 
Saviour  may  plunge  the  man  in  deeper 
distress,  but  each  deeper  plunge  brings 
with  it  a  greater  hope.  There  is  a  way 
out.  A  little  faith  and  he  is  on  solid 
ground  again  clasped  in  the  Saviour's 
arms. 

The  penitent  sits  in  a  station  but  takes 


Repentance  101 

no  train.  He  loathes  his  present  situa- 
tion and  has  made  up  his  mind  to  go 
somewhere.  Faith  will  soon  pick  up  the 
whole  man  and  carry  him  out  and  unite 
him  to  God. 


102  Personal  Salvation 


CHAPTER  X 

Faith 

The  crisis  of  the  experience  of  rescue 
from  sin  is  the  act  of  faith  by  which  the 
sinful  man  accepts  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ, 
personally  appropriates  Christ's  work  in 
atonement,  and  joins  himself  to  Christ  in 
a  declaration  of  loyalty  and  allegiance.  In 
the  hour  of  decision  the  man  is  put  in  a 
situation  where  he  must  reject  or  accept 
God.  In  the  act  of  faith  the  man  takes 
up  his  total  self  and  carries  it  over  and 
gives  it  to  God.  Since  faith  is  the  means 
by  which  the  rescue  from  sin  is  personally 
appropriated,  and  also  the  condition  of 
continued  harmony  with  God  and  of  all 
growth  and  progress  in  the  Christian  life, 
there  is  need  for  clear  and  careful  treat- 
ment. How  often  a  repentant  sinner  is 
advised    thus :     "Believe    that    Christ    is 


Faith  103 

able  to  save  you  and  you  are  saved;"  or, 
"Jtist  believe  you  are  saved  and  you  are 
saved."  If  the  sinner  did  not  believe  that 
Christ  was  able  to  save  him,  and  had  died 
to  save  him,  he  would  not  be  there  seek- 
ing salvation.  A  man  is  always,  by  the 
very  nature  of  the  case,  a  believer  before 
he  is  a  seeker.  Neither  can  a  man  believe 
he  is  saved  until  he  is  saved.  He  is  not 
saved  until  he  accepts  Christ  by  faith,  and. 
when  he  has  done  that  he  will  know  it,  for 
it  is  something  he  has  done  himself.  It  is 
a  decision,  a  choice,  of  his  own  wall.  The 
sinner  goes  to  the  altar  not  to  receive 
something,  but  to  do  something;  that  is, 
to  surrender  and  totally  abandon  himself 
to  God.  When  he  has  done  this  he  will 
receive  pardon  and  forgiveness. 

Religious  faith  is  a  great  moral  grapple 
with  a  moral  ideal,  in  which  the  man  com- 
mits himself  in  loving  self-surrender  and 
trust  to  that  ideal  and  makes  his  whole 
life  conform  to  its  demands.  The  charac- 
ter of  the  faith  is  determined  by  the  char- 


104  Personal  Salvation 

acter  of  the  moral  ideal.  The  higher  the 
ideal  the  more  perfect  and  definite  the 
faith  and  the  resultant  life.  In  order  to 
secure  a  clear  understanding  of  faith  each 
phase  of  religious  faith  will  be  briefly  dis- 
cussed, with  definitions  and  other  quota- 
tions from  the  notes  of  Dr.  Curtis's  lec- 
tures. The  Christian  Church  has  within 
its  membership  and  among  its  adherents 
a  large  number  whose  faith,  while  it  is 
truly  religious,  is  not  actually  Christian, 
even  though  largely  colored  by  Chris- 
tian teaching.  For  this  reason  we  are 
giving  these  phases  of  faith  as  clear  a 
treatment  as  possible. 

I.    RELIGIOUS    FAITH 

"On  the  merely  religious  plane  faith  is 
a  bearing  of  trust,  by  which  a  man  ex- 
presses his  belief  in  some  moral  ideal,  his 
duty  toward  that  ideal,  his  regard  for  that 
ideal,  and  a  venture  of  the  will  in  the 
name  of  that  ideal." 

On  the  very  lowest  plane  faith  is  an  act 


Faith  105 

of  the  total  man.  it  is  the  most  whole- 
some thing  a  man  ever  does.  Rqoentance 
is  the  bridge  that  separates  morality  from 
religion.  Faith  is  the  actual  occupancy  of 
the  land  on  the  side  of  the  river  to  which 
repentance  leads.  In  the  discussion  of  the 
preparation  for  conversion  we  found  that 
if  a  man  was  entirely  true  to  his  ideal  his 
very  faithfulness  would  cause  a  state  of 
unrest  and  despair,  because  his  moral 
ideal  expanded  faster  than  his  ability  to 
live  up  to  it.  This  peculiar  sorrow  is  a 
"glimmer  of  that  righteous  sorrow  which 
in  Christian  doctrine  is  called  repent- 
ance." Now,  if.  in  spite  of  his  despair,  the 
man  holds  himself  true  to  his  moral  ideal 
"the  initial  bearing  of  repentance  is  fol- 
lowed by  a  bearing  of  confidence  that  his 
intention,  his  love  of  the  right  for  its  own 
sake,  is  the  main  thing,  after  all,  and 
must,  somewhere,  somehow,  be  the  final 
test  of  destiny.  This  confidence  is  not  a 
result  of  the  mechanical  or  natural  pro- 
cess of  the  moral  life,  but  is  a  creation  of 


106  Personal  Salvation 

the  Holy  Spirit  as  he  meets  with  grace 
the  man's  despair.  Just  as  we  had  an 
initial  or  pretypical  repentance,  so  now  we 
find  a  pretypical  faith.  This  faith  sub- 
stitutes a  personal  attitude  toward  right- 
eousness for  the  perfect  moral  life,  which 
was  found  to  be  impossible.  The  man 
dares  to  believe  that  what  he  means  is  of 
more  ultimate  worth  than  what  he  can  ac- 
complish now  under  his  ideal.  This  sub- 
stitution of  spirit  for  letter  does  not 
weaken  his  regard  for  the  moral  law,  but 
strengthens  it.  Never  before  did  he  so 
intensely  try  to  live  a  perfect  life.  The 
secret  of  this  effort,  continued  and  in- 
creased, is  a  new  love  for  his  moral  ideal, 
and  a  new  hope  that  none  of  his  struggle 
can  be  wasted." 

Thus  faith  is  the  center  of  all  religion, 
even  the  lowest.  This  faith  which  is  de- 
fined as  "merely  religious"  is  the  faith  of 
the  pantheist,  and  of  those  who  do  not 
know  a  personal  God,  but  who  do  believe 
in  some  power  higher  than  themselves, 


Faith  107 

which  makes  for  righteousness.  A  man 
can  have  such  an  ideal  and  such  a  re- 
Hgious  faith  anywhere  in  the  world,  re- 
gardless of  his  environment.  In  a  Chris- 
tian land  a  man  with  such  a  faith  may 
practice  some  Oiristian  virtues,  but  they 
form  no  part  of  his  religion  and  are  not 
related  to  his  religious  ideal.  Such  a  faith 
may  be  very  earnest  and  work  great  sacri- 
fices; it  may  have  a  settled  purpose  of 
righteousness  and  be  very  strenuous  and 
noble,  but  it  has  no  peace  and  joy,  no  par- 
don, no  knowledge  of  God,  no  comfort  in 
sorrow,  no  loving  and  sympathetic  Sav- 
iour. No  man  in  a  Christian  land  ought 
to  be  satisfied  with  such  a  faith.  Let  us 
leave  such  a  faith  to  the  heathen,  and,  see- 
ing that  we  have  a  great  High  Priest  that 
is  passed  into  the  heavens,  Jesus  the  Son 
of  God,  a  High  Priest  that  is  touched 
with  a  feeling  of  our  infirmities,  let  us 
come  boldly  unto  the  throne  of  grace 
that  we  may  obtain  mercy,  and  find  grace 
to  help  in  time  of  need. 


108  Personal  Salvation 

II.    FAITH    IN    A    PERSONAL    GOD 

"On  the  theistic  plane  faith  has  the 
same  elements  of  belief,  duty,  regard,  and 
venture,  but  the  moral  ideal  is  either  the 
personal  God,  or  the  moral  law  as  an  ex- 
pression of  the  nature  of  the  personal 
God." 

This  is  a  much  higher  faith  than  the 
faith  defined  as  merely  religious.  The 
fact  that  the  moral  ideal  is  identified  with 
the  personal  God  gives  it  a  majesty  and 
grandeur  and  thrill  of  enthusiasm  utterly 
unknown  to  the  faith  on  the  lower  plane. 
The  conception  of  the  personal  God  won- 
derfully increases  the  elements  of  love 
and  duty,  and  adds  to  the  self-surrender 
and  sacrifice  an  intense  and  profound  per- 
sonal satisfaction.  But  even  with  the 
profound  note  this  faith  is  all  but  despair. 
It  has  no  joyfulness,  no  shout  of  victory. 
There  is  no  way  for  man  to  reach  the  God 
and  no  way  for  God  to  come  down  to  help 
the  man;    ''neither  is  there  anv  daysman 


Faith  109 

betwixt  us,  that  might  lay  his  hand  upon 
us  both."  Job,  Socrates,  and  Carlyle  are 
good  examples  of  faith  on  this  plane. 

III.   OLD   TESTAMENT   FAITH 

"On  the  Old  Testament  plane  the  ideal 
is  essentially  the  same,  that  is,  a  personal 
God,  and  the  moral  law  as  an  expres- 
sion of  the  personal  God.  but  the  ideal 
is  so  colored  by  the  Messianic  prophe- 
cies as  greatly  to  increase  the  element  of 
regard.'' 

The  Old  Testament  fathers  had  for 
their  ideal  a  personal  God  and  the  moral 
law,  but  they  had  something  more.  The 
great  thought  in  the  Old  Testament  is  the 
coming  Messiah.  God  is  coming  to  help. 
The  hope  of  a  coming  Messiah  gave  a  pe- 
culiar definiteness  to  their  faith  and  made 
it  great.  The  idea  of  Immanuel  made  the 
Hebrew  prophet  and  poet  a  man  of  deep 
and  intense  joy.  It  was  this  idea  that 
God  was  coming  to  help  his  people  that 
lay  at  the  foundation  of  the  Old  Testa- 


110  Personal  Salvation 

ment  priesthood  and  the  day  of  atone- 
ment. 

The  dominant  note  in  Christian  faith 
is  this :  God  has  come  to  help  us.  He  is 
with  us  now.  "If  any  man  sin,  we  have  an 
Advocate  with  the  Father,  Jesus  Christ 
the  righteous :  and  he  is  the  propitiation 
for  our  sins;  and  not  for  ours  only,  but 
also  for  the  whole  world."  Christian  faith 
will  be  defined  and  discussed  at  length  in 
the  next  chapter. 

We  cannot  emphasize  too  greatly  the 
idea  that  faith  is  an  expression  of  the 
whole  man  in  self-sacrifice  and  toil  for  a 
moral  ideal.  Longfellow's  well-known 
poem  "Excelsior"  is  an  almost  perfect 
delineation  of  the  strenuousness  of  re- 
ligious faith.  It  has  the  conception  of  a 
high  ideal,  the  duty  of  attaining  it,  love 
as  a  great  motive  power,  and  the  ac- 
tion of  the  will  to  meet  the  ideal.  The 
word  "excelsior"  is  a  part  of  a  Latin 
phrase  meaning  "My  goal  is  higher," 
and   is   here   used   as   an   expression   of 


Faith  111 

"incessant  aspiration  after  something 
higher:" 

"The  shades  of  night  were  falling  fast, 
As  through  an  Alpine  village  passed 
A  youth,  who  bore,  'mid  snow  and  ice, 
A  banner  with  the  strange  device, 

'Excelsior !' 
"His  brow  was  sad;  his  eye  beneath 
Flashed  like  a  falchion  from  its  sheath, 
And  like  a  silver  clarion  rung 
The  accents  of  that  unknown  tongue, 

'Excelsior !'  " 

Because  the  multitude  were  satisfied  witH 
their  present  attainment  his  aspiration 
and  sacrifice  spoke  to  them  in  a  "strange" 
and  "unknown  tongue."  He  felt  keenly 
the  temptation  to  stay  his  course  and  en- 
joy the  blessing  near  at  hand,  but  his  goal 
was  higher : 

"In  happy  homes  he  saw  the  light 
Of  household  fires  gleam  warm  and  bright ; 
Above,  the  spectral  glaciers  shone. 
And  from  his  lips  escaped  a  groan, 
'Excelsior!' 

"  *0  stay,'  the  maiden  said,  'and  rest 
Thy  weary  head  upon  this  breast !' 
A  tear  stood  in  his  bright  blue  eye. 
But  still  he  answered,  with  a  sigh, 
'Excelsior !' " 


112  Personal  Salvation 

In  the  hour  of  testing  there  were  none  to 

help  him,  none  to  encourage,  none  to  give 

him  a  hand  of  fellowship.  The  ''old  man" 

and  the  "peasant"  warned  him  of    the 

dangers  of  the  way,  but  boldly  he  presses 

on  to  attain  a  goal  they  have  long  ago 

given  up: 

"  Try  not  the  Pass !'  the  old  man  said  ; 
'Dark  lowers  the  tempest  overhead, 
The  roaring  torrent  is  deep  and  wide !' 
And  loud  that  clarion  voice  replied. 
'Excelsior!' 

"  'Beware  the  pine  tree's  withered  branch ! 
Beware  the  awful  avalanche!' 
This  was  the  peasant's  last  Good  night. 
A  voice  replied,  far  up  the  height, 
'Excelsior!'" 

Dangers  and  difficulties  only  spur  on  the 

man  of  faith.    His  goal  is  higher.    He 

"laughs   at   impossibilities, 
And  cries,  'It  shall  be  done !'  " 

The  long  night,  with  its  cold  and  storms 

and  dangers,  passed : 

"At  break  of  day,  as  heavenward 
The  pious  monks  of  Saint  Bernard 
Uttered  the  oft-repeated  prayer, 
A  voice  cried  through  the  startled  air, 
'Excelsior !'  " 


Faith  113 

On  until  late  in  the  day  the  great  struggle 
continued.    But  at  last 

"A  traveler,  by  the  faithful  hound, 
Half-buried  in  the  snow  was  found, 
Still  grasping  in  his  hand  of  ice 
That  banner  with  the  strange  device, 
'Excelsior!"  " 

They  only  found  his  body.  His  spirit  had 
gone  on.  He  had  been  faithful  to  his 
ideal.  He  had  suffered  for  it.  He  made 
sacrifices  for  it.  He  died  for  it.  But  he 
found  it.  He  had  gone  up  higher.  The 
impetus  of  his  faith  carried  him  across  to 
a  "sky  serene  and  far." 

"There  in  the  twilight  cold  and  gray, 
Lifeless,  but  beautiful,  he  lay, 
And  from  the  sky,  serene  and  far, 
A  voice  fell,  like  a  falling  star. 
'Excelsior !'  " 

But  this  faith,  grand  and  heroic  as  it 
was,  is  correctly  described  as  "merely  re- 
ligious." The  youth  did  not  have  any 
definite  idea  as  to  what  he  would  find  at 
the  top  of  the  mountain.  He  only  knew 
that  there  was  something  higher  than 
himself  and  that  he  would  find  it. 


114  Personal  Salvation 

If  the  youth  had  seen  a  light  at  the  top, 
shining  through  the  window  of  a  dwell- 
ing, assuring  him  that  a  Person  waited  to 
greet  him  when  he  came  to  the  top,  his 
faith  would  have  been  theistic.  Still  he 
would  not  have  been  conscious  of  help, 
even  though  invisible  hands  were  smooth- 
ing his  way  and  lessening  his  dangers. 

If  he  had  seen  a  Man  coming  down 
from  the  house  with  a  lantern,  to  find  and 
assist  him,  he  would  have  had  the  Old 
Testament  faith,  with  its  vision  of  a  com- 
ing Messiah.  This  would  have  given  a 
greater  element  of  hope  and  assurance 
and  love  to  the  situation. 

Christian  faith  means  that  Christ  has 
come.  God  is  with  us  in  the  power  of  his 
mighty  personality,  standing  by  our  side, 
his  arm  linked  in  ours,  filling  our  hearts 
with  courage  and  victory  and  fellowship, 
and  inspiring  new  life  into  our  lagging 
footsteps  with  stories  of  our  Father's 
house  and  the  welcome  awaiting  us  in  its 
many  mansions.     As  the  Christian  jour- 


Faith  115 

neys  he  may  keenly  realize  that  "still  afar 
the  mountains  are,"  yet  he  trustingly 
sings,  with  John  Henry  Newman: 

"Lead,  kindly  Light,  amid  the  encircling  gloom, 

Lead  thou  me  on ! 
The  night  is  dark,  and  I  am  far  from  home; 

Lead  thou  me  on! 
Keep  thou  my  feet;  I  do  not  ask  to  see 
The  distant  scene;  one  step  enough  for  me. 

"So  long  thy  power  hath  blessed  me,  sure  it  still 

Will  lead  me  on 
O'er  moor  and  fen,  o'er  crag  and  torrent,  till 

The  night  is  gone. 
And  with  the  morn  those  angel  faces  smile 
Which  I  have  loved  long  since,  and  lost  awhile!" 


116  Personal  Salvation 


CHAPTER  XI 
Christian  Faith 

"On  the  Christian  plane,  faith,  while  it 
culminates  in  a  definite  act,  is  a  personal 
bearing  of  the  entire  man,  expressing  his 
belief  in  Christ  as  God,  his  consequent 
duty  toward  Christ,  his  love  for  Christ, 
and  a  venture  out  upon  Christ  as  his  per- 
sonal Saviour." 

The  value  of  the  act  of  faith  will  not  be 
hard  to  understand  if  we  keep  in  mind 
the  condition  of  the  man  who  is  exerci- 
sing the  faith.  He  has  been  convicted  of 
sin  as  a  thing  against  God,  and  he  knows 
that  the  blame  for  his  evil  condition  is  all 
his  own.  In  his  despair  God  comes  to 
him  with  a  gracious  offer  of  forgiveness 
and  restoration.  The  man  must  choose 
between  his  sin  and  God.  God  makes  a 
strong  appeal  to  him.  God's  love  and 
mercy  have  melted  his  heart.     He  hates 


Christian  Faith  117 

his  sin.  He  especially  hates  it  because  he 
has  now  come  to  realize  what  God  is  to 
him,  and  love  and  duty  toward  God  come 
rushing  upon  him  as  a  flood.  Christ 
is  presented  to  him  as  an  atoning  Saviour, 
as  an  only  Saviour,  Christ  comes  as  God, 
with  the  authority  of  God.  When  the 
man  decides  against  his  sin,  and  chooses 
God,  the  God  he  accepts  is  Christ.  The 
act  of  the  will  which  chooses  Christ  com- 
mits the  whole  self  to  Christ,  and  the  hu- 
man side  of  the  rescue  is  completed.  The 
man  has  put  himself  in  God's  hands.  God 
will  restore  his  soul. 

The  fundamental  thing  in  this  Chris- 
tian faith  is  the  belief  in  Christ  as  God. 
The  man  has  sinned  against  God  per- 
sonally, and  God  cannot  delegate  the  act 
of  forgiveness  to  another.  The  man  de- 
mands, and  rightly  demands,  that  he  be 
allowed  to  deal  directly  with  God.  Noth- 
ing else  will  do.  The  man  cannot  accept 
Christ,  or  allow  Christ  to  have  any  rela- 
tion to  the  matter,  until  he  is  convinced 


118  Personal  Salvation 

that  Christ  is  God.  There  can  be  no 
Christian  faith  until  the  deity  of  the 
Christ  is  settled.  And,  somehow,  when 
the  man  comes  fairly  to  the  test  he  accepts 
Christ  as  God  without  any  hesitancy.  The 
enlightenment,  the  conviction,  the  repent- 
ance, have  quickened  and  unified  the 
whole  man.  His  faculties  are  all  alert, 
they  all  work  together.  The  sinner  is  not 
a  theologian,  but  he  knows  what  he 
wants,  and  when  he  sees  Christ  he  knows 
he  has  found  it.  There  is  something 
about  the  personality  of  Christ  that  con- 
vinces the  honest,  eager  heart  that  he  is 
divine.  It  is  not  his  genius,  not  his  men- 
tal ability,  not  his  miracles,  not  his  spir- 
itual insight,  not  his  love,  not  his  self- 
sacrifice.  But  in  some  way  his  bearing 
expresses  to  us  all  the  fullness  of  God, 
and,  with  the  apostles,  we  behold  his 
glory,  the  glory  of  the  only  ber.otten  of 
the  Father,  full  of  grace  and  truth.  The 
power  of  the  sufferings  and  death  of 
Christ  lies  in  the  fact  that  the  suffering  is 


Christian  Faith  119 

an  expression  of  the  self-sacrifice  of  God. 
The  revival  power  of  a  church  can  almost 
be  measured  by  the  clearness  of  its  belief 
in  the  deity  of  Christ.  One  great  trouble 
with  the  Church  is  the  utter  flabbiness 
with  which  the  fundamental  Christian 
doctrines  are  held. 

With  the  mental  side  of  the  man  car- 
ried, the  recognition  of  duty  and  the  af- 
fections are  soon  carried.  If  Christ  is 
only  a  man  there  is  no  duty.  But  the  man 
is  dealing  with  God,  who  appeals  to  his 
whole  moral  nature.  The  feelings  of  duty 
and  love  arise  spontaneously  as  soon  as 
Christ  is  recognized  as  God.  There  is 
now  a  great  motive  to  action,  a  compound 
motive  composed  of  love  and  duty.  This 
great  motive  urges  the  man  to  accept 
Christ.  It  does  not  compel  him,  but  it 
wields  a  very  great  pressure.  When  the 
will  submits  the  whole  man  is  carried,  and 
the  total  personality  is  joined  to  Christ  by 
a  declaration  of  loyal  trust  and  allegiance 
whose  motive  power  is  love  and  duty. 


120  Personal  Salvation 

All  through  the  experiences  discussed 
so  far  the  man  has  believed  in  himself,  in 
his  moral  nature,  in  the  demands  of  his 
ideal,  in  the  reality  of  a  higher,  purer  life. 
The  man  decides  that  the  hunger  of  his 
moral  nature  is  not  a  dream  but  a  reality. 
So  when  Christ  comes  it  is  easy  to  believe 
in  him.  He  has  trusted  himself,  he  can 
trust  Christ;  so  he  takes  his  all  and  com- 
mits it  to  Christ  for  time  and  eternity. 

The  relation  between  a  lover  and  his 
bride  is  a  clear  illustration  of  faith.  It 
begins  with  a  mental  attitude.  There 
must  be  knowledge  before  there  can  be 
anything  else.  The  woman  presents  cer- 
tain marked  characteristics  and  facts 
which  are  data  for  mental  judgment.  If 
the  woman  by  her  appearance,  disposi- 
tion, actions,  etc.,  pleases  the  man  his 
mental  judgment  approves  her  and  a  feel- 
ing of  respect  follows.  By  the  dignity  of 
his  bearing  and  the  greatness  of  his  per- 
sonality Christ  secures  the  approval  of  the 
judgment  so  soon  as  the  facts  concerning 


Christian  Faith  121 

liiiii  arc  known.  So  far  the  two  cases  are 
parallel.  The  same  faculties  are  con- 
cerned in  each.  The  next  step  is  love. 
Love  cannot  be  forced.  "The  love  which 
is  the  profoundest  feeling  of  personal  in- 
terest is  a  gift,  pure  and  simple."  The 
only  thing  that  one  can  do  to  secure  love 
is  to  put  one's  self  in  such  a  position  that 
the  gift  of  love  may  follow.  The  love 
when  it  comes  furnishes  motive  power  for 
further  action.  With  the  approval  and 
the  love  the  moral  nature  is  interested, 
and  duty  arises  to  increase  the  strength  of 
the  motive  and  to  become  a  part  of  it. 
The  feeling  of  duty  as  a  motive  to  mar- 
riage may  not  be  very  strong,  but  in  rela- 
tion to  Christ  the  feeling  of  duty  is  very 
strong,  since  Christ  is  God  and  we  feel  the 
force  of  his  demands  upon  us.  Christ  is 
also  so  supremely  beautiful  and  lovable 
that  he  easily  wins  the  heart  and  carries 
the  moral  nature  with  it.  But,  with  the 
love  and  duty  present,  the  attitude  is  not 
vet  that  of  faith.     The  intellect  has  con- 


122  Personal  Salvation 

ceived  an  end,  and  there  is  a  strong  com- 
pound motive,  composed  of  duty  and  love, 
toward  the  action  necessary  to  secure  the 
end,  but  there  is  no  faith  until  the  will  is 
carried  and  the  total  self  is  carried  over 
and  joined  and  entirely  committed  in 
trust  to  the  care  of  another.  A  man  may 
have  the  approval  of  judgment,  and  feel 
the  love  and  duty  very  keenly,  and  still 
for  some  reason  refuse  to  commit  himself 
by  marriage  to  the  woman  he  loves.  So  a 
man  may  approve  Christ  as  his  God  and, 
with  a  clear  recognition  of  love  and  duty, 
still  refuse  the  surrender  of  will  by  which 
he  definitely  commits  himself  to  Christ. 

When  a  man  commits  himself  to  Christ 
by  faith  he  knows  that  he  has  done  it  just 
as  surely  as  a  man  knows  when  he  has 
made  up  his  mind  to  marry  his  sweet- 
heart. The  man  also  knows  that  he  is 
accepted  of  God,  because  God  has  prom- 
ised forgiveness  to  all  who  come  to  him 
by  faith.  Faith  secures  a  personal  union 
with  God  which  makes  doubt  impossible. 


Christian  Faith  123 

And  here  again  we  see  the  necessity  of  a 
definite  belief  in  Christ  as  God.  If  a  man 
in  his  extreme  need  grasped  for  a  moment 
at  the  word  of  a  man  or  of  an  angel,  and 
found  momentary  relief  in  that,  still  the 
time  would  come  when  he  would  doubt. 
Also,  as  we  shall  see,  faith  secures  a  vital 
union  between  the  believer  and  the  object 
of  his  faith.  If  a  man  joins  himself  by 
faith  to  a  man,  it  matters  not  how  perfect 
that  man  may  be  nor  how  full  of  the  spirit 
and  blessing  of  God,  the  believer  has  not 
yet  secured  that  personal  relation  with 
God  which  is  the  goal  of  all  religious 
endeavor. 

The  act  of  faith  is  the  climax  of  con- 
version. The  rescue  is  instantly  complete. 
The  work  that  God  must  do  he  does  in- 
stantly. The  man  may  or  may  not  be  at 
the  time  conscious  of  the  divine  work  in 
the  rescue. 

The  act  of  faith  may  or  may  not  be  ac- 
companied by  emotional  excitement.  That 
depends  upon  the  man  and  his  disposi- 


124  Personal  Salvation 

tion  and  surroundings.  Until  the  faith  is 
consummated  it  is  a  time  for  calm  delib- 
eration and  great  earnestness  and  serious- 
ness. The  seeker  should  never  be  bewild- 
ered or  hindered  by  having  his  thoughts 
or  attention  directed  to  anything  except 
Christ  and  the  surrender  to  him.  When 
the  surrender  is  made  and  Christ  is  ac- 
cepted there  v^^ill  be  joy  and  peace  as  a  re- 
sult of  the  union  with  Christ.  The  divine 
plan  is  that  the  man  shall  come  into  the 
relation  toward  God  of  a  loving  and  obe- 
dient child.  By  repentance  and  faith  the 
man  has  surrendered  himself  in  joyful  al- 
legiance to  that  plan.  There  is  joy  among 
the  angels  and  in  the  church  because  a 
new  brother  has  been  born  into  the  family 
of  God. 


The  Righteous  Quality  of  Faith    125 


CHAPTER  XII 

The  Righteous  Quality  of  Faith 

The  rescue  from  sin  which  God  has 
provided  is  not  a  legal,  forensic,  or  formal 
redemption,  concerning  itself  merely  with 
external  things.  It  is  complete  and  per- 
fect, and  exactly  meets  the  necessity  of 
the  situation  both  within  and  without.  It 
lifts  the  man  out  of  the  wreck  of  sin  and 
gets  the  sin  out  of  the  man.  It  gets  the 
man  into  the  kingdom  of  God  and  gets 
the  kingdom  of  God  into  the  man.  At 
every  stage  the  man  acts  of  his  own  free 
will,  and  yet  his  rescue  is  all  of  God. 
God  meets  the  man,  wherever  he  is,  and 
by  a  very  simple  process  the  whole  man 
is  gathered  up  and  started  on  toward  the 
goal.  Without  having  any  violence  done 
to  his  nature  the  man  is  so  completely  sep- 
arated from  his  sins  that  he  is,  in  a  very 
real  sense,  a  new  creature,  yet  his  per- 

9 


126  Personal  Salvation 

sonal  identity  is  not  disturbed.  The  se- 
cret of  the  whole  process  lies  in  the 
quality  and  results  of  the  act  of  faith  by 
which  the  rescue  is  secured.  Faith  is  not 
an  arbitrary  condition  which  takes  the 
place  of  righteous  conduct,  but  is  of  itself 
righteous  conduct  of  the  very  highest  or- 
der, and  it  is  also  a  guarantee  of  righteous 
conduct  in  the  future.  It  has  a  power  of 
its  own  to  secure  a  righteous  result  which 
is  a  true  inward  holiness.  Thus,  for  the 
reason  that  faith  has  an  ethical  quality 
and  an  ethical  result,  it  can  be  trusted  to 
secure  the  beginning,  continuance,  and 
completion  of  the  whole  Christian  life. 

Faith,  even  on  the  lowest  plane,  has  a 
true  ethical  quality.  There  are  two  ele- 
ments in  faith  which  give  it  this  righteous 
quality :  ( i )  The  conscience  is  involved, 
and  duty  is  a  part  of  the  motive  leading  to 
the  decision  of  the  will.  This  fact  gives 
to  the  decision  a  moral  quality  and  makes 
the  act  of  faith  righteous  conduct.  (2) 
In  faith  the  total  man  is  carried,  and  any- 


The  Righteous  Quality  of  Faith     127 

thing  which  carries  the  total  man  has  a 
righteous  quality,  since  man  is  made  in 
the  image  of  God.  In  sin  the  man  is  frag- 
mentary. His  sin  is  never  an  expression 
of  his  total  self.  The  image  of  God  is  held 
in  abeyance,  "held  down  in  unrighteous- 
ness," But  when  a  man  expresses  his 
whole  self,  as  he  does  in  faith,  he  ex- 
presses the  image  of  God  within  him,  and 
that  makes  such  expression  a  righteous 
act.  The  act  of  faith  is  the  beginning  of 
holiness. 

Faith  has  also  in  addition  to  its  right- 
eous quality  an  ethical  or  righteous  re- 
sult. The  ideal  which  draws  out  the 
faith  is  a  righteous  ideal,  and  in  follow- 
ing the  ideal  there  is  a  righteous  result. 
A  man  becomes  like  that  \vhich  he 
thinks  upon  and  loves  and  endeavors  to 
secure,  (i)  Faith  has  an  unselfish  ideal. 
The  center  of  the  man's  life  is  trans- 
ferred from  self  to  something  outside  of 
self.  The  life  begins  to  reorganize  about 
the  unselfish  ideal,  and  the  beauty  of  the 


128  Personal  Salvation 

ideal  permeates  the  whole  man.  There 
can  be  no  faith  without  an  ideal  entirely 
unselfish  and  outside  the  man  himself. 
The  cure  of  a  disease  can  never  be  made 
an  object  of  faith.  There  cannot  be  an 
unselfish  motive  of  love  and  duty  toward 
the  securing  of  such  an  end.  Because 
faith  has  for  its  object  a  righteous  ideal 
entirely  without  the  self  it  has  a  righteous 
result.  (2)  Faith,  as  Paul  says,  "works 
by  love."  This  means  that  love  is  a  part 
of  the  motive  leading  to  the  action.  This 
element  of  love  is  particularly  strong  in 
Christian  faith.  To  the  Christian  "God 
is  love;  benignant,  self-communicating, 
self-sacrificing  love.  To  believe  in  such 
a  God  is  to  make  love — similar  in  spirit, 
if  limited  in  capacity — the  law  of  life. 
Not  the  love  of  gratitude  alone,  but  the 
love  of  adoration  for  the  highest  conceiv- 
able ethical  ideal  realized  in  the  divine 
nature"  (A.  B.  Bruce).  There  is  a  very 
vigorous  and  profound  spiritual  law  that 
the  choice  of  a  motive  strengthens  that 


The  Righteous  Quality  of  Faith     129 

motive  and  weakens  all  opposing  motives. 
Hence,  when  in  faith  the  compound  mo- 
tive of  love  for  and  duty  toward  a  right- 
eous ideal  is  chosen,  that  motive  is 
strengthened  and  all  opposing  motives  are 
weakened.  By  the  expression  of  faith, 
and  by  the  continued  attitude  of  faith,  the 
motive  of  love  and  duty  for  the  righteous 
ideal  goes  on  from  strength  to  strength 
until  it  gains  entire  control  of  the  whole 
life  and  all  opposing  motives  are  killed. 
Thus  the  righteous  character  is  fixed  as 
a  result  of  faith.  (3)  The  third  righteous 
result  of  faith  is  that  the  man  in  faith 
unites  himself  to  his  ideal  and  identifies 
himself  with  it.  This  vital  union  with 
Christ  secured  by  faith  has  both  a  right- 
eous quality  and  a  righteous  result. 

Thus  we  see  that  faith  is  not  an  ar- 
bitrary condition,  securing  a  merely  for- 
mal or  legal  pardon.  It  is  a  powerful 
principle  energized  by  an  unselfish  love, 
meriting,  in  a  certain  sense,  the  grace 
with  which  God  meets  it. 


130  Personal  Salvation 


CHAPTER  XIII 

Faith  and  the  Divine  Side  of  Con- 
version 

The  work  of  God  in  the  actual  rescue 
from  sin  is  threefold.  It  is  one  work  in 
the  sense  that  it  is  all  done  at  one  time, 
and  it  is  completely  and  perfectly  done 
immediately  following-  the  act  of  faith. 
The  sinner  has  repented  of  his  sins  and 
definitely  accepted  God.  God  immediate- 
ly accepts  the  sinner,  and  a  perfect  recon- 
ciliation at  once  takes  place.  This  recon- 
ciliation has  three  distinct  phases  which 
can  be  easily  distinguished,  even  though 
they  all  occur  at  once.  The  sinner  by  his 
sin  has  made  himself  liable  to  punishment, 
and  has  also  personally  offended  God. 
The  reconciliation  means  that  the  of- 
fenses, in  so  far  as  they  relate  to  the  moral 
law,  are  pardoned,  and  that  the  man,  in 
so  far  as  he  has  grieved  God,  is  forgiven. 


Divine  Side  of  Conversion  131 

The  sinner  by  his  sin  has  so  dissipated 
and  degraded  his  moral  powers  that  im- 
purity pervades  his  whole  nature,  and  he 
has  no  settled  purpose  of  righteousness 
and  no  power  to  live  up  to  such  a  purpose 
if  he  had  it.  In  the  rescue  from  sin  the 
man  acquires  a  guiding  principle  of  right- 
eousness with  power  to  follow  its  lead- 
ings. The  Holy  Spirit  does  such  a  work 
within  the  man  that  he  has  power  to  over- 
come all  sin  and  lead  a  holy  life.  The  sin- 
ner by  his  sin  has  separated  himself  from 
God's  family,  has  gone  into  a  far  country, 
and  is  outside  of  God's  plan  for  the  hu- 
man race.  The  reconciliation  with  God 
means  that  the  man  has  returned  to  God 
and  is  adopted  into  God's  family  and  has 
all  the  rights  and  privileges  of  the  sons  of 
God.  God  sends  the  spirit  of  his  own  Son 
into  his  heart,  teaching  him  to  say  *'Abba, 
Father."  and  witnessing  to  the  new  filial 
relation. 

Each  of  these  phases  of  personal  sal- 
vation will  be  discussed  in  due  time.   The 


132  Personal  Salvation 

purpose  now  is  to  show  how  each  of  these 
elements  of  the  divine  side  of  the  rescue 
is  related  to  the  act  of  faith.  By  faith  the 
man  has  joined  himself  to  Christ  in  loy- 
alty and  holy  allegiance.  The  profound 
element  in  the  situation  is  this:  God  no 
longer  deals  with  the  man  through  the 
moral  law,  but  he  deals  with  him  per- 
sonally through  Christ.  Because  the  man 
is  joined  to  Christ  the  past  is  all  forgotten 
and  blotted  out,  and  God  deals  with  the 
man  from  the  new  standpoint.  And  God 
also  deals  with  the  present  as  a  prophecy 
of  the  future.  God  does  not  judge  the 
man  by  each  detail  of  his  life,  but  by  the 
union  with  Christ,  which  is  a  settled  pur- 
pose of  righteousness,  guaranteeing  per- 
fect conduct  in  due  time.  The  man  is 
saved — that  is,  he  has  escaped  punish- 
ment and  is  a  personal  friend  of  God — 
not  because  he  is  perfect,  but  because  he 
is  joined  to  Christ.  If  the  man  were  deal- 
ing with  the  law  the  law  would  demand 
sanctification  and  glorification  all  at  once. 


Divine  Side  of  Conversion  133 

But  he  is  dealing  personally  with  God  in 
Christ,  and  God,  having  secured  by  the 
man's  faith  a  loyal  person,  is  well  content 
to  wait  for  the  holy  person  and  the  per- 
fect man,  knowing  that  the  first  will  se- 
cure the  others  as  sure  as  the  day  follows 
the  sunrise. 

In  a  home  in  a  western  village  was  a 
son  thirteen  years  of  age.  For  a  year  he 
had  been  lying  to  his  parents  and  to  his 
teacher,  had  played  truant,  and  acquired 
other  vicious  habits.  The  habit  of  lying 
had  taken  a  specially  strong  hold  on  him. 
Finally  the  father  became  aware  of  the 
situation  and  sought  some  punishment 
that  should  lift  up  before  the  boy  and  the 
rest  of  the  family  the  wickedness  of  such 
conduct.  The  father's  attitude  was  one 
of  stern  righteousness.  The  boy  would 
not  show  any  sorrow  for  his  sin,  and 
finally,  knowing  that  a  punishment  was 
coming,  he  ran  away.  The  mother  had 
been  very  feeble  for  some  time,  and  the 
father  had  kept  the  most  of  the  truth 


134  Personal  Salvation 

from  her,  but  at  last,  since  the  boy  was 
gone,  he  had  to  tell  her  the  whole  truth. 
The  mother  quickly  understood  the  situ- 
ation, and  would  not  allow  the  father  to 
bend  from  his  stern  attitude.  The  real 
problem  before  them  was  not  merely  to 
get  the  boy  home,  but  to  get  him  to  repent 
of  his  sin  and  become  loyal  to  their  au- 
thority. They  needed  something  that 
would  reach  the  very  center  of  the  situa- 
tion and  soften  the  boy's  heart,  rescue 
him  from  his  sin,  and  restore  him  to  true 
sonship  in  the  family.  The  mother  solved 
the  difficulty.  Sick  and  feeble  as  she  was, 
she  started  out,  on  a  dark  and  stormy 
night,  to  find  the  boy  and  bring  him  home. 
The  father  at  home  paced  the  floor  and 
suffered  tenfold  more  than  the  mother. 
After  a  long  and  weary  search  the  mother 
found  him  asleep  on  some  rubbish  in  an 
old  mill.  When  she  awakened  him  from 
his  sleep  he  realized  at  once  his  mother's 
sacrifice  for  him  and  his  sin  against  his 
parents,  and  he  broke  all  to  pieces.     Re- 


Divine  Side  of  Conversion  135 

pentant  and  sorrowful,  and  yet  with  a 
new  and  profound  love  for  his  mother, 
he  went  home  with  her,  supporting  her  as 
he  could,  for  she  was  utterly  exhausted. 
Together  they  tottered  through  the  door 
at  home,  where  the  father  waited  with 
anxious  heart  to  receive  them.  Alother 
and  son,  he  gathered  them  to  his  arms  in 
one  strong  embrace,  and  that  moment  the 
boy  was  justified,  forgiven.  A  great  and 
new  thing  had  come  into  the  boy's  life 
which  in  a  very  real  sense  made  him  a 
new  creature:  this  new  thing  was  a  new 
love  for  his  parents,  and  especially  his 
new  attitude  toward  his  mother  and  his 
new  loyalty  to  her.  Tliis  furnished  a 
center  for  future  operations,  and  the  fa- 
ther's attitude  of  stern  rigliteousness  was 
buried  in  the  new  relation.  The  father 
could  not  weaken  his  demands  or  change 
his  attitude  so  long  as  the  l3oy  was  re- 
bellious. But  now  that  the  boy  is  repent- 
ant, and  is  joined  to  his  mother  by  a  new 
and  powerful  tie,  the  father  can  safely 


136  Personal  Salvation 

forgive  the  boy  and  deal  with  him  from 
the  new  standpoint.  And  the  father  can 
do  this  with  perfect  safety,  since  the  boy 
and  the  rest  of  the  family  get  from  the 
mother's  self-sacrifice  a  keener  sense  of 
the  wickedness  of  the  sin  than  they  could 
have  gotten  from  any  amount  of  direct 
punishment.  The  mother's  motive  was 
not  merely  love.  It  was  a  holy  love  which 
not  only  sought  to  bring  back  the  boy  but 
sought  to  bring  him  back  a  good  boy.  The 
mother's  suffering  expressed  both  the  fa- 
ther's righteousness  and  the  father's  and 
mother's  love.  The  boy  clearly  under- 
stands this,  and  for  this  reason  the  pun- 
ishment can  be  remitted  and  the  boy  for- 
given. And  this  new  attitude  toward  his 
mother  not  only  secures  his  present  for- 
giveness; it  secures  a  right  course  of  con- 
duct in  the  future.  The  lying  habit  may 
be  so  strong  that  the  boy  will  sometimes 
lie  unconsciously,  but  it  is  not  the  same 
kind  of  a  lie  as  before.  As  soon  as  he 
thinks  of  his  mother  he  will  repent  of  the 


Divine  Side  of  Conversion  137 

lie.  The  father  knows  that  as  long  as  the 
boy  is  joined  to  his  mother  he  is  going  on 
toward  righteousness.  Having  secured  a 
loyal  boy.  he  can  safely  wait  for  the  good 
boy.  And  the  new  situation  is  much  more 
powerful  than  the  old  one  in  securing  the 
good  boy. 

The  boy's  attitude  toward  his  mother 
is  precisely  that  of  faith.  When  his 
mother  came  to  him  there  was  knowledge, 
love,  and  duty,  and  a  decision  of  the  will 
by  which  he  definitely  committed  himself 
in  loyal  trust  to  his  mother.  He  was  res- 
cued by  faith,  and  the  faith  has  a  peculiar 
and  vital  relation  to  all  his  parents'  atti- 
tudes toward  him.  Just  so  God  in  Christ 
goes  after  the  sinner,  melts  his  heart  and 
ofifers  him  salvation.  By  faith  the  sinner 
joins  himself  to  Christ  in  loving  trust  and 
loyalty,  and  God  forgives  him  and  uses 
this  new  factor  in  his  life  to  secure  future 
holiness.  For  this  reason  holiness  is  the 
second  goal  of  personal  salvation.  By  the 
very  nature  of  the  case,  there  cannot  be  a 


138  Personal  Salvation 

holy  person  until  there  is  a  loyal  person 
to  be  made  a  holy  person. 

So  a  man  is  not  justified  because  he  is 
perfect.  He  is  justified  because  he  is 
joined  in  the  whole  man  to  Christ.  God 
judges  a  Christian  man  by  his  relation  to 
Christ,  and  not  by  his  relation  to  the 
moral  law.  But  the  moral  law  is  in 
Christ,  and  the  Christian's  duty  is  greater 
than  before  because  of  his  love  for  Christ. 
Thus  a  man  is  saved  by  faith  and  not  by 
works.  Paul  used  legal  terms  because 
they  were  clear-cut  and  carried  definite 
ideas,  but  he  has  the  great  truth  beneath. 
He  is  all  the  time  thinking  of  the  union 
with  Christ  and  the  ethical  quality  of  that 
union.  James  would  say  that  the  boy 
was  saved  by  going  home  with  his 
mother.  Paul  goes  much  deeper  and  ex- 
presses the  real  truth,  and  would  say  that 
the  boy  was  saved  because  of  his  new  at- 
titude toward  his  mother;  that  is,  by 
faith. 


Divine  Side  of  Conversion         139 

SUMMARY 

1.  *'When  a  man  has  faitli  in  Christ  as 
his  personal  Saviour  this  faith  really  joins 
the  man  to  Christ  in  holy  allegiance." 

2.  "Because  faith  results  in  the  holy 
allegiance  it  is  a  fitting  ethical  substitute 
for  the  former  demand  of  obedience  to  the 
moral  law.  That  is,  faith,  while  a  condi- 
tion of  salvation,  is  not  arbitrary,  but  is 
selected  for  the  precise  reason  that  it  has 
an  ethical  content  and  brings  about  a 
powerful  ethical  result." 


140  Personal  Salvation 


CHAPTER   XIV 
Justification 

"Justification  is  a  forensic  term, 
meaning  that  a  guilty  man  is  forgiven, 
because  Christ  died  to  save  him,  on  the 
condition  of  personal  faith  in  Christ  as 
Saviour.  But,  deeper  yet,  justification 
means  that  God  has  given  up  the  old 
way  of  dealing  with  man,  through  the 
moral  law,  and  now  deals  with  him  as 
a  man  joined  to  Christ  in  holy  allegiance. 
God's  bearing  is  changed,  but  the  new 
bearing  is  fully  as  righteous  as  the  old 
one." 

In  every  chapter  the  fact  has  been  em- 
phasized that  the  goal  of  all  religion  is  to 
bring  the  man  into  a  closer  personal  rela- 
tion with  the  holy  God.  This  means  that 
the  man  will  be  inwardly  and  outwardly 
holy  and  full  of  love  in  every  part.  But 
it  means  more  than  that;    it  means  that 


Justification  141 

the  man  is  God's  friend  and  that  there  is 
personal  communion  and  fellowship  be- 
tween them.  Hence  the  great  work  in  the 
rescue  from  sin  is  to  get  the  man  to  cease 
his  opposition  to  God  and  submit  himself 
to  God  in  loyal  and  loving  obedience. 
This  submission  and  trust  bring  the  man 
into  a  proper  relation  with  God,  and 
there  is  perfect  harmony  and  peace  and 
fellowship  between  them.  The  justified 
state  is  exactly  illustrated  by  the  case  of 
the  boy  mentioned  in  the  last  chapter. 
The  goal  of  the  family  government  is  to 
secure  loving  and  trustful  loyalty  from 
the  children  to  the  parents  and  to  their 
plan  for  the  home.  In  the  case  mentioned 
this  was  secured  by  the  mother's  sacrifice 
and  the  boy's  loyalty  to  her.  With  the 
proper  relation  between  parent  and  child 
any  desired  result  can  be  obtained.  If  the 
boy  has  been  disobedient  this  will  secure 
obedience.  If  he  has  acquired  evil  habits 
this  will  secure  his  escape  from  them. 
Now  the  justified  man  stands  in  precisely 

10 


142  Personal  Salvation 

the  same  relation  to  God.  He  has  sub- 
mitted himself  in  loyal  and  loving  trust. 
God  can  do  with  him  what  he  will.  The 
justified  state  is  a  state  of  peace  with  God, 
of  fellowship  with  God,  of  obedience  to 
God,  of  complete  abandonment  of  every- 
thing displeasing  to  God,  of  freedom 
from  willful  sin,  a  state  of  sonship  in 
God's  family,  and  of  rapid  development  of 
all  the  habits  and  personal  virtues  of  the 
sons  of  God.  Justification  is  the  first  goal 
and  the  greatest  goal  of  personal  salva- 
tion and  personal  religion.  It  is  never 
superseded  or  overshadowed  by  any  other 
state  or  blessing.  To  the  end  of  the 
eternities  God  deals  with  the  Christian 
through  his  motive  of  love  and  loyalty  to 
the  Lord  Jesus  Christ;  that  is,  by  the  new 
personal  relation  secured  by  faith.  If,  as 
a  result  of  the  personal  relation  with  God, 
the  motive  of  love  and  loyalty  to  Christ 
becomes  absolutely  dominant  in  the  man's 
life,  thus  securing  entire  inward  holiness, 
the  justified  state  is  not  superseded  nor 


Justification  143 

its  glory  dimmed,  but  it  is  thereby  made 
secure.  If  in  the  life  after  death  the  per- 
sonal fellowship  with  God  should  secure 
for  the  man  an  actual  becoming  of 
what  he  really  means  to  be,  thus 
extending  the  perfect  holiness  of  inten- 
tion to  an  actual  holiness  of  conduct,  the 
justified  state  is  not  thereby  weakened  or 
passed  by,  but  is  merely  coming  into  pos- 
session of  its  own.  If  on  the  day  of  res- 
urrection the  whole  man,  soul  and  body, 
is  glorified  by  the  power  of  God  and,  con- 
formed within  and  without  to  the  image 
of  God's  only  begotten  Son,  and  comes 
into  God's  immediate  and  visible  presence, 
he  does  not  cease  to  live  by  faith,  nor  is  his 
blessing  of  justification  swallowed  up  in 
the  bliss  of  heaven.  For  the  first  time  in 
all  his  existence  the  man  is  freed  from 
limitations  and  has  opportunity  to  know 
the  real  height  and  depth  and  length  and 
breadth  of  justification;  that  is,  of  per- 
sonal friendship  with  God.  The  man  who 
belittles  the  justified  state  needs  to  taste 


144  Personal  Salvation 

again  the  bread  of  life  that  he  may  learn 
its  flavor. 

The  conviction  of  sin  had  a  double  ele- 
ment; a  realization  of  the  guilt  of  sin 
and  of  the  fact  of  God's  personal  dis- 
pleasure. When  the  sinner  repents  of  his 
sin,  and  accepts  Christ  by  faith,  he  escapes 
the  just  punishment  due  his  sins  and  is 
also  restored  to  God's  personal  favor. 
Thus  justification  includes  the  two  ele- 
ments of  pardon  and  forgiveness. 

PARDON 

The  sinner  has  broken  the  law  and  is 
under  sentence  of  punishment.  "The 
soul  that  sinneth,  it  shall  die."  The  sinner 
has  been  tried  and  found  guilty.  He  ad- 
mits his  guilt  and  blames  no  one  but  him- 
self. The  sentence  has  been  announced. 
But  God,  the  just  Judge,  announces  that, 
on  condition  of  the  sinner's  repentance 
and  faith,  he  will  be  pardoned.  The  man 
meets  the  conditions,  and  thus  goes  free. 
God  will  not  execute  the  punishment  that 


Justification  145 

his  sins  deserve.  Tlie  boy  who  sinned 
against  his  parents  did  two  things:  he 
personally  displeased  his  father  and  also 
laid  himself  liable  to  the  punishment 
which  the  father  has  set  for  disobedience. 
The  father  can  pardon  the  boy  and  not 
inflict  the  punishment.  But  neither  the 
boy  nor  his  father  is  satisfied  with  that. 
The  personal  displeasure  remains.  A 
real  reconciliation  must  remove  the  per- 
sonal friction  and  secure  perfect  harmony. 
Justification  is  much  more  profound  than 
pardon,  in  that  it  carries  with  it  the  per- 
sonal element  of  forgiveness.  The  sin 
is  pardoned,  the  man  is  forgiven. 

FORGIVENESS 

This  is  the  profound  element  of  justifi- 
cation, the  restoration  to  personal  favor 
with  God.  Any  boy  with  the  right  spirit 
would  rather  take  a  whipping  and  have 
his  father's  good  will  and  favor  than  es- 
cape the  whipping  and  still  be  under  his 
father's  displeasure.    So,  in  a  normal  con- 


146  Personal  Salvation 

version,  the  sinner  thinks  more  of  getting 
right  with  God  than  of  escaping  punish- 
ment. This  personal  peace  with  God  is 
the  blessedness  of  justification.  This  is 
the  source  of 

"The  sweet  comfort  and  peace 
Of  a  soul  in  its  earliest  love." 

This  peace  is  a  real  experience,  as  the 
song  testifies : 

"That  sweet  comfort  was  mine, 

When  the  favor  divine 
I  received  through  the  blood  of  the  Lamb; 

When  my  heart  first  believed, 

What  a  joy  I  received, 
What  a  heaven  in  Jesus's  name ! 

"Jesus  all  the  day  long 

Was  my  joy  and  my  song: 
O  that  all  his  salvation  might  see! 

'He  hath  loved  me,'  I  cried, 

'He  hath  suffered  and  died. 
To  redeem  even  rebels  like  me.' 

"O  the  rapturous  height 

Of  that  holy  delight 
Which  I  felt  in  the  life-giving  blood ! 

Of  my  Saviour  possessed, 

I  was  perfectly  blessed, 
As  if  filled  with  the  fullness  of  God." 


Justification  147 

Justification  is  an  act  and  a  state.  As 
an  act,  it  is  pardon  and  forgiveness;  as  a 
state,  it  is  a  continuation  and  an  increase 
of  the  peaceful  and  happy  relation  with 
the  personal  God.  The  man  is  in  the 
happy  state,  not  because  he  is  perfect,  but 
because  he  is  joined  to  Christ.  God  deals 
with  him  in  this  new  way  just  as  the  fa- 
ther dealt  with  his  son  in  a  new  way  be- 
cause of  his  new  relation  to  his  mother. 
Some  one  may  say  that  the  sinner  needs 
something  more  than  pardon,  he  needs  to 
be  actually  made  good.  True,  he  needs 
something  more  than  pardon,  and  he 
needs,  at  present,  something  much  more 
profound  than  to  be  made  good.  He 
needs  the  personal  love  and  friendship  of 
God,  and  that  which  he  most  needs  God 
gives  him.  A  man  cannot  be  in  a  state  of 
friendship  with  God  without  having  his 
whole  life  transformed  into  the  likeness 
of  his  divine  Friend.  If  a  man  is  walking 
with  God  in  personal  communion  day  by 
day  we  can  trust  that  man  to  come  out  at 


148  Personal  Salvation 

the  right  place.  God  will  give  him  a 
hunger  for  all  that  he  needs,  and  then 
vi^ill  abundantly  supply  the  hunger  from 
his  own  unexhaustible  supply.  The  only 
trouble  is  that  so  many  professed  Chris- 
tians do  not  constantly  walk  with  God, 
constantly  endeavoring  to  put  on  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  making  no  provision  to  ful- 
fill the  lusts  of  the  flesh. 

This  personal  relation  to  God  does  not, 
however,  of  itself  remove  the  depraved 
nature  and  the  ruin  of  sin.  It  is  not 
enough  that  we  are  personal  friends  with 
a  great  physician.  The  physician  must 
actually  apply  the  necessary  remedies  be- 
fore the  disease  is  removed.  But  the  phy- 
sician cannot  heal  us  until  we  put  our- 
selves in  his  care.  So  our  new  relation  to 
God,  secured  by  faith  in  Christ,  gives  to 
God  an  opportunity  to  do  something  that 
he  could  not  do  before;  that  is,  actually 
heal  the  disease  of  sin.  The  act  of  faith 
which  joins  the  man  to  Christ  not  only 
secures  his  pardon  and   forgiveness;    it 


Justification  149 

also  secures  a  renewal  of  his  nature,  a 
clnange  of  heart  which  transfers  the  center 
of  the  hfe  from  self  to  Christ  and  thus 
brings  about  true  inward  holiness.  This 
change  of  heart  is  properly  called  a  new 
birth,  a  regeneration.  To  it  we  now  turn 
our  attention. 


150  Personal  Salvation 


CHAPTER  XV 
Regeneration 

Salvation  is  a  rescue  from  sin  and 
from  all  the  results  of  sin.  Deserved  pun- 
ishment and  the  displeasure  of  God  are 
two  results  of  sin  v^hich  are  removed  by 
justification.  Sin  also  reacts  upon  the 
man  himself  and  tends  to  destroy  the 
whole  moral  nature.  From  the  depravity 
of  nature  the  sinner  is  delivered  by  the 
second  element  of  the  divine  side  of  con- 
version, regeneration.  Before  taking  up 
the  subject  in  detail  a  statement  by  Dr. 
Curtis  will  throw  light  on  the  whole  dis- 
cussion : 

"When  a  man  is  joined  to  Christ  in 
holy  allegiance  by  faith  the  Holy  Spirit, 
who  is  always  seeking  to  restore  the  man, 
finds  a  new  opportunity  in  this  new  rela- 
tion which  the  man  sustains  to  Christ. 
The    man's    new    motive    of    loyalty   to 


Regeneration  151 

Christ  is  filled  with  power  and  becomes 
the  central  organizing  motive  aljout 
which  the  Holy  Spirit  reconstructs  the 
entire  inner  life.  This  is  the  man's 
new  birth,  or  regeneration." 

WHY  A  NEW   BIRTH  IS  NECESSARY 

"Ye  must  be  born  again."  "Put  ofif, 
concerning  the  former  conversation,  the 
old  man,  which  is  corrupt  according  to 
the  deceitful  lusts;  and  be  renewed  in 
the  spirit  of  your  mind;  .  .  .  put 
on  the  new  man,  which  after  God  is 
created  in  righteousness  and  true  holi- 
ness." 

Regeneration  is  made  necessary  by  the 
fact  that  sin  has  degraded  and  partly  de- 
stroyed the  moral  nature.  The  image  of 
God  is  broken  and  the  man  cannot  restore 
himself,  since  his  loss  is  a  loss  of  that  very 
power  of  holding  the  total  self  in  subjec- 
tion to  God.  This  depravity  of  nature  is 
partly  inherited  and  partly  the  result  of 
personal  sin.     Sin  produces  a  disease  of 


152  Personal  Salvation 

its  own  and  aggravates  a  disease  already 
present.    This  depraved  state  is : 

1.  A  state  of  moral  darkness. 

Sin  breaks  off  communication  with  God 
and  interferes  with  the  divine  enlighten- 
ment. The  sinner  cannot  tell  what  is 
right  and  what  is  wrong.  He  knows  that 
there  is  a  right  and  a  wrong,  but  he  has 
lost  his  bearings  and,  without  a  compass, 
wanders  here  and  there  in  the  fog,  not 
knowing  whether  he  is  going  toward  the 
desired  haven  or  toward  the  deadly  break- 
ers. This  moral  darkness  is  somewhat  al- 
leviated by  the  enlightenment  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  but  this  enlightenment  is  very 
small  except  to  those  under  the  influence 
of  the  Gospel.  So  long  as  the  man  con- 
tinues in  sin  the  Spirit  has  no  opportunity 
to  remove  that  darkness. 

2.  A  state  of  moral  weakness. 

The  sinner  cannot  do  the  right  even 
when  he  knows  what  the  right  is.  He  is 
not  only  in  a  fog  without  a  compass;  he 
has  disabled  his  rudder  and  cannot  sail  a 


Regeneration  153 

course  after  he  has  decided  upon  one.  "To 
will  is  present  with  me,  but  how  to  per- 
form that  which  is  good  I  find  not." 

3.  A  state  of  moral  impurity. 

The  sinner  has  come  to  love  a  great 
many  things  which  are  sinful  and  degrad- 
ing and  hateful  to  God.  He  is  not  only 
adrift  in  a  fog,  part  of  the  time  he  is  glad 
of  it.  He  does  wrong  because  he  loves 
darkness  rather  than  light.  One  hour  he 
decides  to  hunt  up  the  harbor  and  to  en- 
deavor to  reach  it.  The  next  hour  he  de- 
liberately guides  his  sinking  craft  deeper 
into  the  fog  and  away  from  the  harbor 
bell  which  began  to  sound  in  his  ears.  His 
love  for  right  is  not  a  day  dawn,  but  only 
a  single  flash  of  lightning  which  is  swal- 
lowed up  in  the  deeper  darkness  of  a  wild 
and  stormy  night.  The  only  power  that 
can  scatter  that  darkness  is  the  power 
which  in  the  beginning  said,  "Let  there 
be  light,"  and  light  was. 

These  three  elements  of  the  depraved 
state  may  all  be  summed  up  in  one  word, 


154  Personal  Salvation 

unholy.  The  word  holy  has  come  to 
mean  moral  purity,  but  that  is  a  derived 
and  secondary  meaning.  A  holy  person 
is  a  person  who  demands  of  himself  that 
every  act,  word,  and  thought  be  an  ex- 
pression of  the  total  self.  This  means 
that  his  moral  righteousness  shall  find 
expression  in  every  activity  of  the  per- 
sonality, thus  securing  moral  purity  for 
every  activity.  As  the  word  "holiness"  is 
generally  used,  this  effect  of  holiness  is 
meant  rather  than  the  cause,  which  is  the 
real  holiness.  This  does  very  well  for 
popular  speech,  but  when  theories  of  re- 
generation and  sanctification  are  built  on 
this  figure  of  speech  the  result  is  both  con- 
fusing and  amusing. 

The  sinner  is  unholy.  This  means 
primarily  that  there  is  no  one  center  that 
controls  and  entirely  dominates  his  whole 
life.  He  is  fragmentary.  His  acts  are 
not  an  expression  of  his  total  self,  but 
only  of  a  part  of  himself — now  this  part, 
now  that.     If  he  tries  to  be  good  in  one 


Regeneration  155 

respect  he  does  not  demand  of  himself 
that  his  purpose  of  goodness  control  him 
in  all  other  respects.  He  has  many  unre- 
lated centers  of  action,  each  working  for 
itself.  He  has  some  righteous  motives 
and  some  sinful  motives.  Sometimes  he 
chooses  the  good  motives.  At  other  times 
he  chooses  the  sinful  motives.  His  nature 
is  not  organic.  He  has  no  center,  no  one 
great  motive  which  entirely  controls  him. 
His  moral  system  has  no  sun  as  a  center 
of  gravitation  to  bring  other  centers  into 
subjection  to  itself.  When  he  tries  to  be 
good  he  finds  a  large  part  of  himself  re- 
belling against  such  action.  When  he 
does  evil  he  is  still  at  war  with  himself. 
The  petty  strife  of  the  feudal  system  has 
not  given  place  to  the  settled  government 
of  a  strong  monarchy.  This  scattered,  di- 
vided state  is  a  result  of  sin.  It  is  in- 
herited depravity  aggravated  by  personal 
sin.  Since  the  man  loves  some  wicked- 
ness, and  has  no  adequate  knowledge  of 
right  and  wrong  and  no  power  to  attain 


156  Personal  Salvation 

the  right  even  if  he  knew  it,  it  is  easily 
seen  that  without  some  outside  power 
comes  to  his  relief  he  can  never  be  free 
from  his  sad  condition.  He  is  as  a  sailor 
who,  in  strange  and  dangerous  waters, 
has  steered  his  vessel  into  a  dense  and 
thickening  fog,  where  with  compass  and 
rudder  gone  he  flounders  in  utter  helpless- 
ness. Unless  some  friendly  pilot  comes 
quickly  to  his  aid,  marks  out  his  course, 
and  restores  both  compass  and  rudder,  a 
fatal  wreck  is  both  sure  and  irrevocable. 
Neither  pilot,  compass,  nor  rudder  will 
avail  a  lost  vessel  when  once  it  is  broken 
and  firmly  settled  in  the  mud. 

THE   NEW  BIRTH  SECURED  BY  FAITH 

To  the  man  in  this  unsettled,  unholy 
state  God  comes  and,  by  conviction  of 
sin,  shows  him  his  sad  condition  and  of- 
fers a  rescue.  The  only  thing  that  the 
man  can  do  is  to  exercise  faith;  that  is,  to 
surrender  himself  in  loyal  trust  to  the 
Pilot.    This  act  of  faith  is  the  man's  first 


Regeneration  157 

move  toward  a  real  holiness;  for  the  first 
time  the  man  has  given  expression  to  his 
total  self.  Man  is  made  in  the  image  of 
God,  having  intellect,  sensibility,  will,  and 
a  moral  nature.  In  sin  only  a  part  of  the 
man  is  carried.  Faith  gathers  up  the 
whole  man  and  commits  it  to  God.  By 
this  decision  and  trust  the  whole  man  re- 
jects sin  and  chooses  God;  he  joins  him- 
self to  Christ  in  a  declaration  of  alle- 
giance. A  great  and  new  center  has  come 
into  his  life.  The  man  has  with  his  whole 
nature  chosen  the  motive  of  love  and 
loyalty  to  Christ. 

Three  things  immediately  follow^  this 
act  of  faith : 

1.  The  man  is  forgiven  and  comes  into 
personal  peace  with  God. 

2.  He  is  regenerated. 

3.  He  is  adopted  into  God's  family. 
Great  emphasis  is  put  on  the  fact  that 

these  three  elements  of  the  divine  side  of 

conversion  immediately  follow  the  act  of 

faith.     This  emphasis  is  necessary  since 
11 


158  Personal  Salvation 

some  are  teaching  that  a  man  may  come 
to  God  by  faith,  asking  for  pardon  and 
forgiveness,  and  receive  it.  and  not  be  re- 
generated, or  born  again,  until  years 
afterward. 

THE    REGENERATE   STATE 

The  fatal  defect  of  the  imregenerate 
state  is  that  the  life  is  not  organic,  there 
is  no  one  center,  no  one  great  motive  that 
entirely  controls  the  v^hole  man.  Several 
good  motives  are  present,  but  no  one  of 
them  is  great  enough  or  total  enough  to 
meet  the  need  and  organize  the  whole 
life  about  itself,  even  if  God  should  come 
and  add  his  own  power  to  that  motive. 
Man's  nature  is  never  perfect  until  God  is 
enthroned  as  supreme  Ruler,  and  this 
need  of  God  cannot  be  brought  into  sub- 
jection to  something  less  than  a  complete 
surrender  and  trust  in  God  such  as  faith 
affords.  The  act  of  faith  which  carries 
the  total  man  in  loving  trust  and  loyalty 
to  the  very  best  the  man  knows  is  suffi- 


Regeneration  159 

ciently  great  and  profound  to  meet  the 
need.  This  presents  to  the  Holy  Spirit 
an  opportunity  he  never  before  had,  and 
he  immediately  fills  that  new  center  with 
a  life  and  power  which  will  enable  it  to 
reorganize  the  whole  man  about  itself.  If 
this  new  motive  were  left  to  itself  it 
would  have  to  take  its  chances  with  other 
good  motives,  and  it  might  be  overcome 
of  evil.  But  God  adds  his  own  divine  life 
to  this  motive,  and  the  Holy  Spirit  ten- 
derly nurtures  it,  and  thus  it  has  power  to 
overcome  the  depravity  and  make  the 
man  holy.  Thus  the  man  is  renewed, 
born  again,  becomes  a  new  creation.  His 
course  is  marked  out,  compass  and  rudder 
are  restored,  the  friendly  Pilot  stands  by 
ready  to  supply  every  need.  This  new 
center,  full  of  divine  life,  will  take  up  all 
other  motives  and  bring  them  into  subjec- 
tion to  the  one  motive  of  loyalty  to  Christ. 
If  any  of  the  motives  are  so  bad  that  they 
cannot  be  related  to  the  motive  of  loyalty 
to  Christ  they  are  destroyed,  and  cease  to 


160  Personal  Salvation 

exist  as  a  part  of  that  man.  If  the  man 
loves  anything  which  cannot  be  made  a 
part  of  the  love  for  Christ  that  love  is 
killed,  and  the  man  comes  to  hate  that 
which  he  once  loved.  Regeneration  is  a 
work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  in  which  he  im- 
parts a  divine  life  which  will  entirely 
renovate  the  soul  and  bring  all  its  powers 
into  relation  to  Christ,  thus  making  the 
man  holy. 

The  renewal  of  the  nature  resulting 
from  the  impartation  of  power  to  the 
great  new  motive  exactly  meets  the  de- 
pravity resulting  from  sin. 

I.  It  removes  the  moral  darkness. 
Since  the  man  has  joined  himself  to 
Christ  he  has  ceased  trying  to  settle  cases 
of  right  and  wrong  and  follows  Christ. 
"Paul  with  the  old  Pharisaic  truth  cuts  a 
swath  of  destruction  in  the  name  of  duty, 
haling  men  and  women  to  prison.  We 
find  him  one  moment  with  a  pocket  full  of 
documents,  charts,  plans,  and  specifica- 
tions of  what  he  shall  do  and  how  he  shall 


Regeneration  161 

do  it.  The  next  moment  the  hght  flashes 
upon  him,  the  Christ  is  before  him,  and 
his  soul  rushes  forward  with  the  cry, 
'Lord,  what  wilt  thou  have  me  do?'  He 
asks  for  no  specifications,  charts,  or  plans. 
He  is  ready  to  take  sealed  orders  from  the 
Christ  to  go  where  he  wants  him  to  go 
and  do  what  he  wants  him  to  do."  So 
long  as  he  follows  Christ  he  can  do  no 
wrong.  In  addition  to  this  personal  rela- 
tion to  Christ  there  is  a  quickening  of  the 
moral  powers  as  a  result  of  the  indwelling 
of  the  Holy  Spirit.  New  opportunities 
are  also  given  for  spiritual  enlighten- 
ment. 

2.  It  removes  the  moral  weakness.  The 
decision  of  the  will  by  which  sin  was  re- 
jected and  God  chosen  has  greatly  w^eak- 
ened  all  evil  motives  and  strengthened  all 
good  ones.  The  decision  has  also  given 
a  new  power  to  the  will  itself.  The  im- 
partation  of  divine  life  and  the  renewal 
resulting  has  given  to  the  will  a  great 
victory.    Every  converted  man  finds  him- 


162  Personal  Salvation 

self  with  a  new  moral  power  which  en- 
ables him  to  overcome  sin.  God's  power 
is  added  to  his  own,  and  the  loyalty  to 
Christ  gives  him  victory  over  all  things 
displeasing  to  Christ. 

3.  It  takes  away  the  love  for  sinful 
things.  The  rejection  of  sin  and  the 
choice  of  God  forever  kills  all  desire 
toward  some  sins.  It  may  not  remove  all 
love  for  evil  things,  but  it  does  remove 
some,  and  the  great  love  for  Christ  and 
the  new  relation  to  Christ  sets  the  whole 
man  fighting  against  all  tendencies  to 
sin,  and  they  will  soon  lose  their  power 
if  resisted.  The  powerful.  Spirit-filled, 
new  love  takes  the  place  of  all  former 
loves. 

4.  It  removes  the  unholy  state.  The 
great  and  new  center  is  endowed  with  a 
power  which  will  enable  it  to  organize  the 
whole  life  about  itself.  The  life  becomes 
organic.  The  man  becomes  holy.  This 
will  be  more  carefully  discussed  in  the 
chapter  on  ''Christian  Holiness." 


Regeneration  163 

Thus  is  seen  the  vital  connection  be- 
tween faith  and  the  divine  side  of  conver- 
sion. It  is  not  a  formal  condition,  but  a 
real  and  necessary  part  of  the  rescue.  Man 
cannot  have  peace  with  God  until  he 
ceases  his  opposition  to  God.  A  mere 
declaration  of  pardon  on  God's  part 
would  not  change  the  situation  at  all.  It 
is  of  no  use  for  God  to  impart  a  new 
life  until  there  is  something  to  impart 
it  to,  something  sufficiently  great  to 
hold  it.  God  does  not  put  new  wine  in 
old  bottles. 

In  discussing  Christian  holiness  the 
state  of  entire  sanctification  should  al- 
ways be  compared  with  and  related  to  the 
regenerate  state  instead  of  the  justified 
state.  Justification  is  an  act  of  pardon 
and  a  state  of  personal  peace,  fellowship, 
friendship,  and  loyalty  to  God.  This 
state  abides,  and  is  never  .-ucceeded  or 
weakened  by  another  state.  In  regenera- 
tion a  work  is  begun  which  will  end  in 
Christian   holiness.      That   no   one  may 


164  Personal  Salvation 

think  that  we  are  departing  from  Meth- 
odist teaching,  this  chapter  will  be  closed 
with  statements  from  three  typical  Meth- 
odist teachers.  The  statements  are  some- 
what abridged,  but  represent  their  views 
in  their  own  words : 

STATEMENT  BY  JOHN  WESLEY 

"Justification  and  the  new  birth  are  in 
point  of  time  inseparable  from  each  other, 
yet  they  are  easily  distinguished  as  not 
being  the  same.  God  in  justifying  us 
does  something  for  us;  in  begetting  us 
again  he  does  a  work  in  us.  The  former 
changes  our  outward  relation  to  God,  so 
that  of  enemies  we  become  children,  by 
the  latter  our  inmost  souls  are  changed, 
so  that  of  sinners  we  become  saints.  The 
one  restores  to  the  favor  and  the  other  to 
the  image  of  God.  Being  born  of  God 
implies  a  vast  inward  change,  a  change 
wrought  in  the  soul  by  the  operation  of 
the  Holy  Ghost.  The  new  birth  is  the 
change  wrought  in  the  whole  soul  by  the 


Regeneration  165 

almighty  Spirit  of  God  when  it  is  'created 
anew  in  Christ  Jesus,'  when  it  is  'renewed 
after  the  image  of  God  in  righteousness 
and  true  holiness.'  In  a  word,  it  is  that 
change  whereby  the  earthly,  sensual, 
devilish  mind  is  turned  into  the  'mind 
which  was  in  Christ  Jesus.'  When  we  are 
born  again,  then  our  sanctification,  our 
inward  and  outward  holiness  begins;  and 
thenceforward  we  are  gradually  'to  grow 
up  in  Him  who  is  our  head.'  A  child  is 
born  of  a  woman  in  a  moment,  or  at  least 
in  a  very  short  time;  afterward  he  grad- 
ually and  slowly  grows,  till  he  attains  to 
the  stature  of  a  man.  In  like  manner  a 
child  is  born  of  God  in  a  short  time,  if 
not  in  a  moment.  But  it  is  by  slow  de- 
grees that  he  afterward  grows  up  to  the 
measure  of  the  full  stature  of  Christ.  The 
same  relation,  therefore,  which  there  is 
between  our  natural  birth  and  our  growth 
there  is  also  between  our  new  birth  and 
our  sanctification."  (Sermon  xlv,  "The 
New  Birth.") 


166  Personal  Salvation 

STATEMENT  BY  JOHN  MILEY 

"The  necessity  for  regeneration  lies  in 
the  depravity  of  our  nature ;  such  a  neces- 
sity can  be  met  only  by  a  divine  operation 
within  the  moral  nature  which  shall  pu- 
rify it  and  transform  it  into  the  moral 
likeness  of  the  divine.  As  the  depravity 
of  the  original  parentage  is  transmitted 
through  natural  generation,  so  through 
regeneration  we  are  transformed  into  the 
moral  likeness  of  the  Holy  Spirit,  By  the 
new  birth  we  receive  the  impress  and  like- 
ness of  the  Holy  Spirit.  The  regenerate 
state  is  a  state  of  subjective  holiness.  It 
must  be  a  state  of  subjective  holiness  be- 
cause it  is  the  result  of  an  operation  of  the 
Holy  Spirit  which  as  really  transforms 
the  soul  into  the  moral  likeness  of  himself 
as  the  laws  of  nature  determine  the  like- 
ness of  the  offspring  to  its  parentage.  In 
regeneration  the  'old  man  is  put  off,'  not 
only  as  a  corrupt  nature  but  as  an  evil 
life;   and  the  new  man  is  put  on,  not  only 


Regeneration  167 

by  a  perfection  of  the  moral  nature  but 
also  in  the  habit  of  a  new  life  in  righteous- 
ness and  true  holiness. 

"We  are  justified  and  regenerated  by 
the  same  act  of  faith.  The  two  are  coin- 
cident in  time."  (Systematic  Theology, 
vol.  ii,  "Regeneration.") 

STATEMENT  BY  RANDOLPH  S.  FOSTER 

"Concurrently  with  pardon  and  for- 
giveness is  a  work  done  in  the  soul  gen- 
erally designated  as  regeneration,  and 
variously  characterized  in  the  Scriptures 
as  being  'born  again,'  created  anew  in 
Christ  Jesus,  etc.  Regeneration  has  to 
do  with  the  soul  itself,  the  condition  and 
state  of  its  powers.  Pardon,  by  which  the 
soul  is  entirely  purged  of  guilt,  does  not 
at  all  affect  the  abnormalcy  (depravity, 
disease)  of  nature  into  which  the  soul  had 
fallen,  and  which  has  acquired  additional 
strength  by  indulgence.  But,  concurrent- 
ly with  pardon,  God  in  the  person  of  the 
Holy  Ghost  returns  to  and  takes  up  his 


168  Personal  Salvation 

loving  and  helpful  abode  in  the  soul  from 
which  guilt  had  expelled  him,  and  by  his 
presence  and  agency  restores  the  lost 
equation,  enables  the  soul  to  righteous- 
ness, rebuilds  the  shattered  constitution, 
reduces  usurpers  to  subjection,  and  rein- 
states the  rightful  Sovereign.  The  soul 
by  this  act  is  made  normal.  When  the 
soul  is  forgiven  guilt  is  removed.  That 
is  negative  righteousness.  When  the 
soul  is  regenerated — that  is,  born  of  God 
— not  only  is  sin  removed  but  the  prin- 
ciple of  righteousness  is  implanted  in  it. 
That  is  positive  righteousness.  By  the 
conjoint  process  the  soul  is  made  right- 
eous." {Philosophy  of  Christian  Experi- 
ence, lecture  vi,  p.  ii6,  seq.) 


Adoption  169 


CHAPTER  XVI 
Adoption 

''Adoption  is  a  legal  term  used  by 
Paul  to  express  in  a  striking  way  the  new 
filial  relation  which  a  converted  man  has 
to  God.  Justification  indicates  that  a  man 
joined  to  Christ  by  faith  has  a  new  rela- 
tion to  the  moral  law;  regeneration  in- 
dicates the  corresponding  new  relation  to 
the  Holy  Spirit;  adoption  indicates  the 
corresponding  new  relation  to  the  family 
of  God." 

"This  family  of  God  is  a  new  spirit- 
ual organism,  in  fact,  a  new  race,  which 
is  being  organized  about  Christ  our 
Saviour.  The  con^•erted  man  is  made 
a  vital  point  in  the  vast  communion 
of  saints  where  God  is  fully  realized  as 
Father." 

"Thus,  while  the  practical  climax  of 


170  Personal  Salvation 

conversion  is  in  Christian  holiness,  the 
climax  in  the  philosophy  of  the  divine 
plan  is  really  in  adoption." 

The  real  significance  of  redemption 
cannot  be  felt  v^ithout  a  clear  conception 
of  what  is  meant  by  the  "family  of  God." 
If  we  can  find  out  what  God  is  trying  to 
do  with  us  we  can  the  better  work  with 
God  to  secure  the  desired  result.  What, 
then,  was  God's  purpose  in  creating  man, 
and  what  is  his  purpose  now  ?  The  Bible 
tells  us  that  man  was  created  a  moral  per- 
son, in  the  image  of  God,  and  that  he  was 
created  in  racial  connection.  "By  noting 
this  fact  it  is  clear  that  the  purpose  of 
creation  was  to  get  a  racial  brotherhood 
of  moral  persons."  What,  then,  is  God's 
aim  in  redemption?  Again  let  Dr.  Curtis 
reply :  "In  creation  God's  aim  was  to  get 
a  racial  brotherhood  of  holy  persons ;  and 
in  redemption  the  aim  is  to  get  such  a 
brotherhood  out  of  a  race  of  sinful  men. 
There  are,  it  will  be  seen,  two  sides  to  this 
aim:    the  personal  side,  to  get  the  holy 


Adoption  171 

man,  and  the  racial  side,  to  get  the  lioly 
brotherhood." 

Thus,  while  God's  primal  purpose  re- 
mains unchanged,  the  entrance  of  sin 
compelled  him  to  change  the  method.  Sin 
wrought  a  great  injury  both  to  the  man 
and  to  the  brotherhood.  To  the  person  it 
brought  guilt,  separation  from  God,  and 
a  deadly  injury  to  the  whole  moral  struc- 
ture. Sin  also  broke  up  the  organic 
brotherhood  of  the  race,  thus  making  of 
the  race  a  complete  failure,  and  on  ac- 
count of  this  failure  the  natural  race  by 
the  method  of  physical  death  ceases  to  be. 
So  there  is  a  double  need  of  redemption. 
On  the  one  side,  redemption  is  necessary 
that  the  man  may  have  his  sins  forgiven, 
and  his  moral  nature  healed,  and  com- 
munion with  God  restored  so  that  he  may 
reach  his  sublime  personal  destiny.  On 
the  other  side,  redemption  is  necessary 
that  "a  new  race  may  be  made  out  of  the 
disrupted  members  of  the  old  Adamic 
race."   The  redemption  in  Christ  exactly 


172  Personal  Salvation 

covers  this  double  necessity.  We  have 
seen  in  our  study  of  the  rescue  how  the 
sinner  is  forgiven  and  restored  to  com- 
munion with  God,  and  how  God  has 
healed  and  renewed  his  injured  moral 
nature.  The  adoption  into  God's  family 
meets  the  second  necessity  for  redemp- 
tion. God  is  seeking  to  make  of  sinful 
men  holy  men,  and  to  mold  these  saved 
men  into  a  race,  a  brotherhood.  The 
method  of  redemption  is  such  that  in  res- 
cuing the  individual  God  is  also  securing 
the  brotherhood.  This  will  appear  as  the 
discussion  proceeds.  This  new  race  or 
brotherhood  is  organized  about  the  Lord 
Jesus  Christ.  He  is  the  Center,  the  Head. 
He  stands  for  the  race,  and  in  a  certain 
sense  he  is  the  race.  He  is  the  head,  we 
are  the  members.  He  is  the  controlling 
mind  and  heart  and  will,  w^e  are  instru- 
ments for  his  service.  He  is  the  vine,  we 
are  the  branches.  In  order  that  Christ 
might  have  this  vital  relation  to  the  race 
it  was  necessary  for  him  to  become   a 


Adoption  173 

member  of  it.  This  is  the  fundamental 
truth  of  the  incarnation.  The  Son  of 
God  took  on  himself  human  nature,  and 
became  a  member  of  that  race,  to  the  end 
that  he  might  organize  it  about  himself. 
In  a  very  real  sense  Christ  while  upon 
earth  was  the  new  race  and  brotherhood 
all  by  himself.  He  lived,  obeyed,  suf- 
fered, as  a  member  of  the  race  and  for  it. 
Now  with  Christ  as  the  Center,  the  Head 
of  the  race,  the  new  spiritual  organism  is 
begun.  The  aim  is  to  get  men  to  join 
themselves  to  Christ  and  submit  them- 
selves to  him  that  he  may  make  them 
members  of  his  body  and  organize  them 
about  himself.  This  union  with  Christ  is 
secured  by  faith.  Faith  is  a  bond  of  al- 
legiance, a  vital  bond  which  really  makes 
the  man  a  member  of  Christ  just  as  the 
branch  is  a  member  of  the  vine.  Thus, 
as  soon  as  a  man  accepts  Christ  by  faith, 
he  becomes  a  member  of  the  new  race 
which  is  being  organized  about  Christ. 
The  new  birth  does  not  make  a  man  a 

13 


174  Personal  Salvation 

member  of  the  brotherhood.  The  union 
with  Christ,  the  submission  to  him,  makes 
the  man  a  child  of  God,  a  member  of  the 
new  race.  That  the  man  may  be  a  worthy 
member  he  must  be  holy  and  reach  his 
highest  personal  destiny.  The  new  birth 
is  necessary  to  holiness.  A  sinner  is  jus- 
tified because  he  is  joined  to  Christ.  A 
sinner  is  regenerated  because  he  is  joined 
to  Christ.  A  lost  man  becomes  a  member 
of  God's  family  because  he  is  joined  to 
Christ.  Thus,  in  securing  holy  men,  God 
is  securing  the  holy  brotherhood. 

God  is  striving  with  men,  seeking  to 
get  them  one  by  one  to  accept  Christ  and 
become  members  of  the  great  brother- 
hood. Every  man  must  make  the  de- 
cision for  himself.  Those  who  reject 
Christ  not  only  do  not  obtain  member- 
ship in  the  new  race,  they  lose  all  racial 
connections.  The  person  who  cares  only 
for  self,  who  will  not  submit  to  God  and 
join  with  others  in  love  and  fellowship, 
by  the  process  of  physical  death  is  cut  off 


Adoption  175 

from  all  of  his  kind  and  is  Ihing  out  into 
the  awful  loneliness  of  personal  isolation. 

To  the  new  brotherhood  God  stands  in 
the  relation  of  Father.  The  entrance  of 
sin  made  it  necessary  for  God  to  assume 
for  a  while  the  attitude  of  a  Ruler,  but 
when  the  disturbance  is  entirely  over- 
come God  will  return  to  his  first  and  best 
relation  of  Father.  Jesus  is  ever  trying 
to  teach  us  that  God  is  our  Father,  and 
ever  trying  to  teach  us  the  filial  spirit. 

Growing  out  of  this  new  relation  to 
the  family  of  God  there  are  two  closely 
related  experiences  which  will  be  dis- 
cussed under  the  heads  of  "Christian  Fel- 
lowship" and  "Christian  Assurance." 


176  Personal  Salvation 


CHAPTER  XVII 

Christian  Fellowship 

The  relation  of  love  and  fellowship 
which  obtains  among  all  those  who  are 
true  Christians  is  seldom  treated  as  a  part 
of  Christian  experience  or  as  an  element 
of  personal  salvation.  But  the  fact  is  that 
this  feeling  is  often  the  strongest  and 
most  real  experience  that  comes  to  the 
new  convert.  We  have  seen  that  every 
one  who  accepts  Christ  becomes  at  once  a 
member  of  the  great  brotherhood  of  the 
family  of  God.  This  adoption  into  God's 
family  brings  with  it  a  true  spirit  of 
brotherly  love  which  seizes  hold  of  all 
other  members  and  holds  them  in  a  keen 
personal  interest.  It  is  comparatively 
seldom  that  the  experiences  of  repentance 
and  faith  are  as  vivid  and  well  defined  as 
in  the  ideal  case  which  has  been  described. 
As  a  natural  result  of  ignorance  in  spir- 


Christian  Fellowship  177 

itual  things,  and  for  other  legitimate  rea- 
sons, a  conversion  may  have  all  the  ele- 
ments of  a  true  rescue,  according  to  the 
outline,  and  still  be  very  vague  and  in- 
definite to  the  convert  himself.  In  many 
cases  the  sinner  would  not  be  able  to  find 
his  way  through  at  all  without  a  helping 
hand.  Just  here  is  seen  the  practical  value 
of  the  Christian  community,  with  its 
power  of  brotherhood  and  fellowship. 
The  members  of  this  brotherhood  are  al- 
ways seeking  to  persuade  men  to  accept 
Christ  and  become  members  of  the  family. 
As  soon  as  a  sinner  begins  to  show  an  in- 
terest in  salvation,  and  to  seek  after  it,  the 
brotherhood  gathered  about  feel  a  great 
love  for  him  and  a  peculiar  interest  in  his 
particular  case.  The  spirit  of  love  and 
fellowship  is  felt  by  everyone  within  its 
reach,  and  is  especially  felt  by  the  seeker 
after  Christ.  The  Christian  community 
in  a  very  real  sense  identifies  itself  with 
the  seeker  and  imparts  its  strength  to 
him,  and  on  the  wings  of  prayer  and  faith 


178  Personal  Salvation 

helps  to  bear  him  over  to  safe  ground. 
How  often  in  great  revival  meetings,  and 
often  in  lesser  meetings,  has  a  sinner  been 
helped  and  quickened  by  the  love  and 
sympathy  of  the  church.  The  faith  of 
the  brotherhood  increases  and  quickens 
the  faith  of  the  individual,  and  makes  it 
clear  and  definite.  Thus,  while  the  expe- 
rience of  acceptance  with  God  may  at  first 
be  very  weak  and  vague,  the  experience  of 
the  personal  love  and  fellowship  of  the 
great  brotherhood  may  be  very  strong 
and  clear.  In  any  case  there  is  among 
those  who  love  the  Lord  Jesus  a  spirit  of 
fellowship  which  amounts  to  a  real  and 
definite  experience.  The  weaker  mem- 
bers are  held  by  the  strong  in  a  spirit  of 
watchful  love,  and  their  growth  in  grace 
and  in  the  development  of  all  Christian 
virtues  is  greatly  increased  by  this  spirit. 
Humanly  speaking,  many  a  convert 
would  be  lost  to  the  church  if  it  were 
not  for  the  care  and  guidance  of  the 
brotherhood. 


Christian  Fellowship  179 

The  social  instinct  which  is  deeply 
implanted  in  human  nature  is  not  only 
greatly  emphasized  and  quickened  by  the 
Christian  experience,  but  it  is  also  fully 
met  and  satisfied  in  the  Christian  com- 
munity. "The  purpose  is  to  have  in  the 
church  a  community  where  each  person 
can  get  the  profoundest  fellowship  in 
service  and  life.  Modern  socialism  is  not 
a  vagary  entire;  it  is  based  on  a  deep 
thing  in  man.  Socialism  is  but  a  genuine 
hunger  eating  the  wrong  food.  The  real 
food  is  in  the  ideal  of  the  Christian 
Church.  Men  think  they  want,  as  one 
has  expressed  it,  the  government  to  hold 
an  umbrella  over  every  man's  head.  They 
think  they  w^ant  a  community  of  goods, 
but  they  really  want  a  community  of 
hearts.  Let  every  man  be  sure  that  every 
other  man  would  give  his  life  to  help  him, 
and  he  is  utterly  satisfied.  The  way  out 
of  the  modern  peril  is  to  bring  back  the 
Christian  Church  to  the  ideal  of  brother- 
hood in  Christ  our  Lord.     The  Christian 


180  Personal  Salvation 

religion  completes  man's  life  in  a  wonder- 
ful way.  The  personal  moral  process  is 
completed  by  the  Christian  faith,  but 
when  it  is  completed  all  the  personal  iso- 
lation has  disappeared.  The  one  indi- 
vidual is  saved,  but  not  alone;  he  is  saved 
by  others  and  with  others  and  for  others. 
His  own  personal  life  is  perfected ;  but  he 
is  left,  at  last,  in  vital,  self-sacrificing  re- 
lations with  a  mighty,  organic  brother- 
hood, a  great  multitude  that  no  man  can 
number." 

The  basis  of  this  new  relation  lies  in 
the  fact  that  when  man  is  joined  to  Christ 
he  becomes  a  member  of  God's  family  and 
God  sends  the  spirit  of  his  own  Son  into 
his  heart,  so  that  he  feels  toward  God  and 
toward  man  exactly  as  God's  own  Son 
feels.  The  indwelling  Jesus  is  *'the  tie 
that  binds  our  hearts  in  Christian  love." 

When  one  Christian  meets  another  they 
meet  as  members  of  the  family  of  God.  It 
matters  not  how  diverse  their  outward 
circumstances,  nor  of  what  nationality  or 


Christian  Fellowship  181 

language  they  may  be;  the  image  of 
Christ  in  one  recognizes  the  image  of 
Christ  in  the  other.  "They  laugh  into 
each  other's  eyes,"  and  hearts  and  faces 
glow  with  the  glory  of  eternal  fellowship. 
When  the  Wesleyan  Methodist  churches 
of  Germany  were  made  an  organic  part 
of  the  Methodist  Episcopal  Church  the 
delegates  to  the  conference  for  union  were 
addressed  by  our  own  Bishop  Goodsell. 
Speaking  of  their  subjection  to  a  Church 
of  another  land  and  another  tongue,  he 
said,  "Do  I  seem  like  a  foreigner  to  you?" 
Immediately  those  Germans  sprang  to 
their  feet  and,  crowding  around  the 
bishop  and  throwing  their  arms  about 
him,  they  cried,  "Mein  Bruder,  mein 
Bruder!"  Fellowship  is  a  real  element  of 
Christian  experience. 

The  Christian  has  a  real  and  vital  fel- 
lowship with  Christ  as  a  result  of  the 
union  by  faith,  but  it  is  not  a  part  of  the 
present  plan  to  discuss  that  phase  of  ex- 
perience.   The  fellowship  of  the  Christian 


182  Personal  Salvation 

community  has  been  introduced  because 
in  the  first  place  it  is  a  real  experience, 
and  in  the  second  place  it  has  a  vital 
bearing  on  the  doctrine  of  Christian 
assurance. 


Christian  Assurance  183 


CHAPTER  XVIII 
Christian  Assurance 

It  is  very  important  for  each  person  to 
know  whether  or  not  at  this  present  mo- 
ment he  is  a  member  of  God's  family. 
There  can  be  no  satisfactory  Christian  Hfe 
if  there  is  vagueness  at  this  point.  If  a 
man  has  vaHd  assurance  that  he  is  a  mem- 
ber of  God's  family  he  can  be  assured  con- 
cerning all  the  other  elements  of  his  ex- 
perience. The  Holy  Scriptures  teach  that 
there  are  two  witnesses  to  the  fact  of 
adoption  into  God's  family.  These  two 
witnesses  are  the  man  himself  and  the 
Holy  Spirit.  "The  Spirit  itself  beareth 
witness  with  our  spirit  that  we  are  the 
children  of  God." 

I.  A  converted  man  can  be  assured 
that  he  is  a  child  of  God  by  a  logical  in- 
ference from  the  facts  furnished  by  his 
new  life.     The  new  life  of  union  with 


184  Personal  Salvation 

Christ  has  certain  marks  that  distinguish 
it  from  the  old  life  of  sin.  If  these  marks 
are  present  the  man  is  living  the  Christian 
life  and  is  a  child  of  God.  John  says  that 
"We  know^  that  we  have  passed  from 
death  unto  life,  because  we  love  the 
brethren."  Since  the  members  of  God's 
family  have  a  profound  love  for  one  an- 
other, a  man  may  be  assured  that  he  is  one 
of  the  family  if  he  has  the  family  feeling 
and  enjoys  the  family  fellowship.  Again, 
in  the  same  chapter,  John  says  that 
"Whosoever  is  born  of  God  doth  not 
commit  sin,"  If  a  man  finds  himself  with 
a  conscious  power  over  sin  and  a  love  for 
righteousness  that  he  has  not  previously 
felt  he  may  reasonably  infer  that  he  has 
been  born  of  God.  In  the  Epistle  to  the 
Galatians  Paul  says  that  "the  fruit  of  the 
Spirit  is  love,  joy,  peace,  long-suffering, 
gentleness,  goodness,  faith,  meekness, 
temperance."  If  a  man  finds  these  virtues 
present  in  his  life  he  may  logically  infer 
that  the  Spirit  dwelleth  in  him,  and  there- 


Christian  Assurance  185 

fore  that  he  is  one  of  God's  children.  The 
Christian  Hfe  furnishes  the  facts  for  its 
own  identification.  But  this  self-assur- 
ance is  not  of  itself  entirely  satisfactory. 
The  trouble  is  that  it  is  likely  to  be  weak 
or  to  fail  altogether  just  at  the  time  when 
most  needed.  In  a  time  of  great  sorrow 
and  affliction,  or  of  very  severe  pain  or 
temptation,  when  all  the  faculties  of  mind 
and  soul  are  strained  and  weak,  the  man 
has  neither  the  disposition  nor  the  ability 
to  examine  his  life  and  satisfy  himself 
with  inferences  therefrom.  He  needs 
something  more  solid  and  substantial, 
something  sure  and  unfailing,  something 
that  is  not  disturbed  by  his  own  moods 
and  frailties.  In  such  a  time  is  felt  the 
need  of  the  Comforter,  whose  good  pleas- 
ure it  is  to  dw^ell  in  the  heart  and  bear 
witness  to  the  truth. 

2.  ''A  converted  man  can  be  assured 
that  he  is  a  child  of  God  by  the  direct  in- 
fluence of  the  Holy  Spirit  witnessing  with 
his  spirit;  that  is, the  Holy  Spirit  helps  the 


186  Personal  Salvation 

man  to  realize  intuitively  that  God  is  his 
Father  and  that  he  is  truly  God's  child." 

When  the  man  joined  himself  to  Christ 
God  accepted  him  as  a  child  and  sent  into 
his  heart  the  Spirit  of  his  own  Son,  and 
the  man  intuitively  feels  toward  God  as 
God's  own  Son  feels.  This  intuition  may 
be  very  weak  at  first,  but  in  a  time  of 
need,  or  in  direct  answer  to  prayer  for  a 
witness,  the  Holy  Spirit  comes  and  takes 
up  the  feeble  intuition  and  puts  his  own 
great  strength  into  it,  and  the  man  knows, 
with  a  knowledge  that  cannot  be  shaken, 
that  God  is  his  Father.  The  Christians 
to  whom  Paul  wrote,  many  of  them  con- 
verted from  paganism,  found  themselves 
with  a  deep  consciousness  that  God  was 
their  Father  and  that  they  were  his  chil- 
dren. Paul  informs  them  that  they  came 
by  that  knowledge,  and  were  able  to  say, 
"Abba,  Father,"  by  the  direct  influence  of 
the  Holy  Spirit.  The  Christian  may  not 
know  when  nor  how  he  came  to  con- 
sciousness or  sonship,  but  he  knows  he 


Christian  Assurance  187 

has  it.  In  every  hour  of  overwhelming- 
affliction  or  temptation  this  deep  con- 
sciousness of  sonshi])  in  God's  family 
abides  strong  and  definite,  as  a  rock  be- 
neath the  feet.  It  holds  us  steady  until 
we  can  gain  a  victory.  This  work  of  the 
Spirit  brings  the  heavenly  home  into  the 
human  heart  and  makes  loneliness  and 
despair  forever  impossible.  Anywhere  in 
the  universe  the  Christian  is  at  home.  He 
has  a  Father,  a  Brother,  a  great  and  hon- 
orable family.  He  can  people  any  soli- 
tude with  the  forms  of  his  beloved  breth- 
ren, and  on  land  or  sea  can  lie  down  to 
rest  in  the  arms  of  a  loving  Father.  He 
is  as  certain  of  his  Father  as  a  bird  is  cer- 
tain of  the  air,  because  he  has  a  knowl- 
edge not  learned  of  the  wisdom  of  men, 
but  by  the  Spirit  of  God. 

This  direct  work  of  the  Holy  Spirit  is 
the  common  privilege  of  all  of  God's  chil- 
dren, regardless  of  training  or  circum- 
stances. Opportunities  for  Christian 
work  and  teaching  add  greatly  to  a  man's 


188  Personal  Salvation 

ability  to  examine  his  own  life  and  com- 
pare it  with  the  pattern  set  forth  in  the 
Scriptures.  But  the  feeble  and  the  most 
ignorant  may  have  the  witness  of  the 
Spirit  in  all  its  strength  if  they  are  closely 
joined  to  Christ  by  faith. 

The  witness  of  the  Spirit  is  known  by 
its  results.  The  work  may  be  so  silent 
that  we  may  know  nothing  of  it,  but  as  a 
result  of  that  work  we  live  and  feel  and 
think  toward  God  as  toward  a  Father. 
The  witness  often  comes  in  answer  to  a 
direct  prayer  for  the  witness.  In  such 
cases  it  is  likely  to  come  at  a  definite 
time  and  with  considerable  clearness.  It 
might  easily  be  mistaken  for  a  "second 
blessing."  In  any  case,  it  comes  at  some 
time  to  all  who  have  faith  in  Christ. 

Attention  is  called  to  the  fact  that  the 
Spirit  tells  us  that  we  are  the  sons  of  God; 
and  not  that  we  are  forgiven,  or  regener- 
ated. Since  we  are  the  sons  of  God  these 
things  have  taken  place;  but  the  Spirit 
bears  witness  to  the  adoption,  since  that  is 


Christian  Assurance  189 

the  fundamental  thing.  The  aim  of  all 
religion  is  to  bring  man  into  a  proper  re- 
lation to  the  holy  God.  In  adoption  that 
proper  relation  is  secured  and  God  tells  us 
of  it.  That  knowledge  brings  peace  and 
eternal  rest. 

Every  Bible  student  must  have  stood 
often  and  long  before  that  colossal  state- 
ment by  Paul :  'T  am  not  ashamed  [con- 
fused, discomfited] ;  for  I  know  whom  I 
have  believed,  and  am  persuaded  that  he 
is  able  to  keep  that  which  I  have  com- 
mitted unto  him."  How  did  Paul's  faith 
become  knowledge?  How  may  our  faith 
become  as  sure  as  Paul's?  We  begin  in 
earliest  childhood  with  a  dim  idea  of  God, 
an  intuition  vague  and  beclouded,  often 
but  little  more  than  a  forgotten  dream. 
It  is  a  long  journey  from  that  beginning 
to  Paul's  confident  "I  know."  After  all, 
how  does  Paul  know  that  he  is  not  de- 
ceived? How  can  Paul  distinguish  his 
knowledge  of  God  from  an  imagination 

which  has  deceived  him  into  accepting  it 
13 


190  Personal  Salvation 

as  a  reality,  or  from  an  error  truly  be- 
lieved? A  man  may  be  entirely  certain 
that  he  knows  something  and  still  be  in 
error.  The  writer  well  remembers  a  man 
who  knew  beyond  all  doubt  that  men 
have  but  eleven  ribs  on  the  left  side  and 
that  the  place  where  the  twelfth  rib  ought 
to  be  is  filled  with  pleura.  Neither  argu- 
ment nor  evidence  could  shake  him.  He 
simply  knew  it,  and  he  trusted  that  knowl- 
edge even  against  the  evidence  of  his  own 
eyes.  How  can  I  be  sure  that  Paul's  "I 
know"  is  not  of  the  same  kind?  There 
are  two  thoughts  which  may  help  us  to 
answer  the  question : 

I.  The  Christian  man  is  certain  of  God 
and  of  the  reality  of  his  spiritual  life  be- 
cause he  is  personally  satisfied  with  his 
trust.  He  began  with  a  weak  intuition  of 
God.  As  his  faith  increased  his  intuition 
was  cleared  up.  As  he  obeyed  his  con- 
science his  moral  nature  took  on  new 
powers  and  God  became  more  real  to  him. 
At  last,  when  he  found  his  whole  moral 


Christian  Assurance  191 

process  completed  b}-  the  Christian  expe- 
rience, he  also  found  that  all  the  longings 
of  his  nature  were  satisfied.  He  has  built 
on  his  belief  in  God  a  structure  which  has 
withstood  every  storm.  He  must  be 
founded  on  a  Rock.  He  has  thrown  him- 
self out  upon  his  faith  as  an  eagle  flings 
himself  into  the  air,  and  it  has  held  him 
up.  The  young  eagle  believes  he  was 
made  to  fly;  by  and  by  he  knows  it.  The 
man  believes  he  was  made  for  God;  by 
and  by  he  knows  it.  A  man  may  be  ab- 
solutely certain  of  a  thing  and  still  be  in 
error.  The  error  w^ill  quickly  appear  the 
moment  he  attempts  to  put  his  false 
knowledge  into  practice.  We  all  remem- 
ber the  case  of  the  tortoise  that  wanted  to 
fly.  A  man  might  deceive  himself  into 
thinking  he  could  walk  on  the  w^ater  or 
fly  from  a  mountain  peak.  He  would 
speedily  be  convinced  of  his  error  if  he 
should  try  to  put  his  idea  into  practice. 
The  Christian  finds  that  his  faith  works 
well.     More  and  more  he  trusts  himself 


192  Personal  Salvation 

to  his  faith,  more  and  more  he  is  satisfied 
with  it.  After  a  while  he  says  with  Paul, 
"I  know."  Experience  has  convinced  him. 
He  has  drunk  at  a  fountain  whose  waters 
have  forever  driven  all  thirst  from  his 
soul.  For  that  reason  he  knows  that  he 
has  found  the  fountain  of  eternal  life. 

2.  "The  Christian  man  is  not  alone  in 
this  experience.  He  has  a  testing  com- 
munity. At  every  turn  of  his  thinking 
and  feeling,  in  all  the  unfolding  of  his  re- 
ligious consciousness,  he  is  bounded  by 
his  brotherhood — a  peculiar  company ;  all 
passing  through  the  same  typical  experi- 
ence ;  but  this  experience  colored  and  mod- 
ified by  difference  in  mental  capacity  and 
training.  Thus  a  person  reaches  certainty 
with  every  conviction  tested  and  confirmed 
by  his  Christian  brethren.  The  supreme 
test  of  Christian  truth  is  not  that  it  can  be 
demonstrated,  like  a  problem  in  mathe- 
matics, but  that  it  satisfies  every  man  who 
lives  the  unselfish  and  glowing  life  of  the 
brotherhood  of  redemption." 


Christian  Assurance  193 

A  chemist  working  in  his  laboratory 
takes  upon  himself  the  work  of  making 
an  acorn.  He  has  material  at  hand.  He 
gets  the  size,  the  shape,  the  color,  and  the 
flavor.  The  product  looks  like  an  acorn. 
Some  might  be  deceived  into  believing  it 
to  be  an  acorn.  Tiie  wise  man  knows 
better.  It  will  not  grow  and  develop  into 
a  tree.  The  real  thing  has  eluded  him. 
The  secret  of  life  he  has  not  found. 
Several  elements  professing  to  contain 
the  secret  have  been  sent  him,  but  they  all 
fail.  But  in  a  strange  book  he  reads  of  a 
new  element  which  seems  to  meet  his 
need.  He  puts  it  into  his  acorn,  and,  lo,  it 
begins  to  grow.  He  makes  another.  It 
grows  also.  He  makes  a  thousand,  they 
all  grow.  He  makes  other  seeds.  The 
new  element  imparts  the  same  power  to 
them.  They  grow  at  home,  abroad,  every- 
where, in  any  soil  or  any  climate.  He 
cannot  prove  that  his  products  are  alive, 
that  he  and  all  other  men  are  not  deceived 
by  appearances.    Nevertheless  he  is  satis- 


194  Personal  Salvation 

fied;  he  says,  "I  know  I  have  found  the 
secret  of  life."  Men  have  been  trying  to 
make  a  life.  They  have  failed,  and  are 
conscious  of  failure.  A  book  appears  say- 
ing that  men  are  made  alive  by  faith  in 
God.  Men  test  it  and  begin  to  live.  They 
are  satisfied.  Others  try  it  with  the  same 
result.  It  works  everywhere,  among  all 
men.  Finally  they  begin  to  say,  with 
Paul,  "I  know  whom  I  have  believed." 
The  result  is  more  than  knowledge;  it  is 
eternal  life. 

Thus  is  reached  the  first  Christian  goal. 
The  rebellious  man  has  become  a  loyal 
citizen  of  the  kingdom  of  God.  The  res- 
cue has  passed  into  reconstruction.  The 
man  is  loyal,  God  can  make  of  him  what 
he  will.  United  to  Christ,  pardoned,  for- 
given, regenerated,  adopted  into  God's 
family,  conscious  of  sonship  and  of  fel- 
lowship with  the  brethren,  having  put 
on  the  whole  armor  of  God,  he  is  ready 
to  start  for  the  second  goal,  Christian 
holiness. 


Christian  Holiness  195 


CHAPTER  XIX 

Christian  Holiness 

The  aim  of  this  chapter  is  to  set  forth 
in  a  clear  and  definite  manner  the  mean- 
ing of  the  words  and  of  the  experience  of 
Christian  holiness.  It  is  hoped  that  the 
words  may  be  freed  from  some  of  the  con- 
fusion which  has  gathered  about  them  as 
a  result  of  partial  and  artificial  treatment. 
The  word  "holy"  has  in  common  usage 
different  meanings.  It  sometimes  means 
"set  apart  to  the  service  or  worship  of 
God;  sacred,  reserved  from  common  or 
profane  use."  In  this  sense  it  is  nearly 
identical  with  "sanctified."  Thus  we 
speak  of  the  holy  temple,  the  Holy 
Scriptures,  the  holy  Sabbath,  the  holy  sac- 
rament, etc.  In  this  sense  it  is  proper  to 
speak  of  the  Christian  at  any  stage  of  his 
experience  as  holy.  The  word  "holy"  is 
also  used  in  a  slightly  different  sense, 


196  Personal  Salvation 

carrying  the  idea  of  being  "clean,  pure, 
free  from  sinful  affections."  Thus  we 
speak  of  a  holy  love,  a  holy  purpose.  The 
motive  of  loyalty  w^hich  a  converted  man 
has  toward  Christ  is  a  holy  motive.  Since 
this  motive  is  the  greatest  thing  in  the 
man's  life,  he  may  very  properly  be  called 
a  holy  man  if  that  particular  meaning  of 
the  word  be  kept  in  mind  when  the  word 
is  used.  But  neither  of  these  ideas  is 
meant  when  the  experience  of  Christian 
holiness  is  spoken  of.  The  meaning  there 
intended  is  "spiritually  whole  or  sound." 
If  this  distinction  is  kept  in  mind  much 
confusion  as  to  the  meaning  of  Christian 
holiness  will  disappear.  Carelessness  in 
the  use  of  words  is  as  sinful  as  any  other 
form  of  moral  looseness.  As  a  prepara- 
tion for  the  discussion  now  before  us  the 
reader  is  referred  to  the  chapter  on  "Re- 
generation." 

Regeneration  is  the  beginning  of  holi- 
ness.    Concerning  it  we  observe: 

I.  It  is  a  work  done  by  the  Holy  Spirit. 


Christian  Holiness  197 

2.  It  is  coincident  with  justification  in 
point  of  time,  and  is  secured  by  and  re- 
lated to  the  same  act  of  faith. 

3.  The  necessity  for  regeneration  lies 
in  the  depravity  of  the  human  nature; 
that  is,  in  the  ruin  wrought  by  sin. 

4.  If  regeneration  meets  this  necessity 
it  must  impart  or  implant  a  life  or  a  prin- 
ciple which  will  remove  the  depravity. 
The  Holy  Spirit  secures  this  end  by  im- 
parting to  the  motive  of  loyalty  to  Christ 
a  power  which  enables  it  to  organize  the 
whole  life  about  itself  and  bring  every 
motive  into  subjection  to  love  for  Christ, 
thus  making  the  life  organic,  whole,  holy. 

5.  Regeneration  is  a  complete  and  per- 
fect work  done  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  done 
once  for  all.  It  does  not  need  doing  over 
again.  It  does  not  need  any  retouching 
to  make  it  perfect.  But  this  does  not 
mean,  and  cannot  mean,  that  the  work 
which  regeneration  is  to  do  is  completed 
when  it  is  begim.  By  the  very  nature  of 
the  case  regeneration  cannot  be  the  im- 


198  Personal  Salvation 

partation  of  a  new  life  and  also  the  work 
which  that  new  life  is  to  do. 

6.  The  Holy  Spirit  will  complete  the 
work  begun  in  regeneration  as  fast  as  the 
man  gives  him  opportunity. 

With  these  facts  in  mind  we  are  ready 
to  discuss  Christian  holiness, 

"When  regeneration  is  completed  the 
result  is  perfection  in  the  range  of  mo- 
tives. This  perfection  is  secured  by  so 
filling  the  motive  of  love  for  Christ  with 
power  that  love  alone  becomes  the  central 
motive,  in  place  of  the  old  complex  motive 
of  loyalty  to  Christ.  This  exchange  of 
motives  may  take  place  gradually  or  sud- 
denly, but  when  the  exchange  is  entirely 
made  the  man's  inner  spiritual  life  is  com- 
pletely organic,  because  the  central  motive 
now  for  the  first  time  constantly  dom- 
inates all  the  smaller  motives." 

As  an  enlargement  of  this  statement  the 
following  points  will  be  discussed:  (i) 
The  work  to  be  done;  (2)  The  method 
of  doing  it ;    ( 3  )   The  time  required. 


Christian  Holiness  199 

I.  The  work  to  be  done.  In  what  re- 
spect does  a  holy  man  differ  from  a 
regenerate  man  ? 

The  motive  which  constrains  or  impels 
a  man  who  is  joined  to  Christ  in  faith  is  a 
complex  motive  composed  of  love  and 
duty.  To  this  motive  the  Holy  Spirit  has 
given  a  peculiar  life,  enabling  it  to  or- 
ganize the  whole  spiritual  man  about 
itself.  Sometimes,  for  some  reason,  the 
love  part  of  the  motive  becomes  weak,  and 
the  man  must  depend  upon  a  feeling  of 
duty  rather  than  of  love.  This  is  a  very 
unsafe  situation,  for  a  neglected  duty 
weakens  the  whole  moral  structure  and 
starts  the  man  back  toward  the  pit  from 
which  he  was  rescued.  "Love  is  the  only 
motive  which  can  be  relied  upon  for  effi- 
cient and  sure  action."  This  life  of  inter- 
mittent love  and  duty  is  not  satisfactory 
to  a  truly  Christian  man.  He  wants  the 
work  completed.  The  Holy  Spirit  must 
come  and  take  the  love  part  of  that  motive 
and  fill  it  with  life  and  power.    It  at  once 


200  Personal  Salvation 

takes  such  entire  control  of  the  man  that 
his  one  motive  of  action  is  love  for  Christ. 
When  this  motive  of  love  for  Christ  is 
filled  with  life  and  power  all  opposing 
motives  are  subordinated,  and  everything 
within  that  man's  range  is  brought  into 
subjection  to  love  for  Christ.  The  whole 
nature  is  organized  about  this  motive  of 
love,  and  the  man  has  become  organic, 
whole,  holy.  In  the  range  of  motive  the 
man  is  perfect.  In  every  moral  act  he 
expresses  his  total  self,  and  since  that  self 
is  controlled  by  love  for  Christ  his  actions 
have  the  quality  of  moral  purity.  As  a  re- 
sult of  being  whole  he  is  clean.  He  does 
not  commit  sin  because  all  the  motives 
that  appeal  to  him  are  subordinated  to  his 
love  for  Christ.  But  these  subordinate 
motives  occasion  many  a  test,  and  it  is 
entirely  possible  for  him  to  decide  with 
one  of  them  and  thus  commit  sin.  So 
long,  however,  as  the  love  for  Christ  re- 
tains control  the  love  of  God  is  shed 
abroad  in  his  heart  by  the  Holy  Spirit  and 


Christian  Holiness  201 

his  whole  life  is  full  of  righteousness  and 
joy  and  peace.  And  yet  the  entire  work 
of  redemption  is  not  completed.  There 
is  not  yet  perfection  of  knowledge  or  of 
conduct.  These  will  come  in  due  time. 
There  is  perfection  in  the  realm  of  motive. 
That  is  all  the  perfection  that  is  attained 
before  death. 

Thus,  while  the  blessing  of  holiness  is 
a  second  work  of  grace,  it  is  not  a  "second 
blessing"  in  the  sense  in  which  those 
words  are  so  often  used.  The  second 
blessing  is  not  needed  because  of  any  im- 
perfection in  the  work  of  conversion,  or 
because  the  man  only  asked  for  pardon. 
It  does  not  make  any  difference  what  the 
man  asked  for.  If  he  gave  himself  to 
Christ  he  was  justified,  regenerated,  and 
adopted  into  God's  family.  The  very  per- 
fection of  the  first  work  made  necessary 
the  second  work  to  complete  it.  When 
the  second  blessing  is  properly  understood 
we  claim  for  it  the  sanction  of  Scripture, 
of  common  sense,  and  of  experience. 


202  Personal  Salvation 

The  one  word  which  correctly  ex- 
presses this  experience  is  "holiness." 
The  use  of  any  other  word  is  the  putting 
of  a  part  for  the  whole,  or  of  a  result  for 
the  cause.  As  a  result  of  the  organiza- 
tion of  the  nature  about  the  Lord  Jesus 
Christ  the  powers  of  the  soul  are  conse- 
crated to  his  service,  are  set  apart  to  a 
sacred  use,  and  this  idea  is  correctly  ex- 
pressed by  the  word  "sanctification."  The 
presence  of  motives  to  sin  pollutes  the 
whole  moral  life.  When  the  reorganiza- 
tion of  the  nature  forever  cuts  these  out 
of  the  new  man  the  result  is  "purity." 
The  one  great  characteristic  of  the  new 
life  is  that  love  rules  supreme;  hence  the 
term  "perfect  love." 

It  is  almost  needless  to  say  that  holiness 
is  not  "maturity,"  or  "Christian  perfec- 
tion," if  anything  more  than  perfection  of 
motive  is  meant  by  those  terms.  There  is 
abundant  opportunity  for  a  holy  man  to 
grow  in  grace.  He  will  not  attain  per- 
fection until  the  resurrection.     Neither  is 


Christian  Holiness  203 

Christian  holiness  identical  with  the  bap- 
tism of  the  Holy  Spirit,  nor  with  the  en- 
duement  of  power,  as  will  be  readily  seen 
w^hen  once  the  nature  of  holiness  is 
understood. 

2.  The  means  by  which  Christian  holi- 
ness is  secured. 

( 1 )  Love  grows  by  expression.  Every 
expression  of  love  for  Christ,  by  w^orship, 
meditation,  testimony,  Christian  service, 
or  sacrifice,  reacts  upon  the  love  and  in- 
creases its  power  and  territory, 

(2)  Every  duty  done  reacts  upon  the 
whole  motive  and  increases  and  develops 
the  love.  So  a  man  may  aid  himself 
toward  the  goal. 

(3)  The  greatest  and  surest  and  quick- 
est method  is  by  a  direct  work  of  the  Holy 
Spirit,  who  can  come  all  at  once  and  fill 
the  motive  of  love  with  such  a  powder  that 
the  work  is  at  once  complete.  The  Holy 
Spirit  must  really  do  the  work,  whether  it 
be  fast  or  slow.  The  man  secures  this 
w^ork  of  the  Spirit  by  faith.    As  the  Holy 


204  Personal  Salvation 

Spirit  teaches  the  man  he  becomes  con- 
scious of  his  need  on  the  one  hand,  and 
more  and  more  conscious  of  the  power  of 
Christ  on  the  other.  He  is  sorry  for  his 
depraved  condition  and  takes  a  new  hold 
upon  Christ.  This  practically  amounts  to 
repentance  for  depravity  and  faith  in 
Christ  to  remove  it.  The  man  could  not 
become  conscious  of  his  need  until  regen- 
eration gave  him  a  standard  to  measure 
himself  by.  He  could  not  know  Christ 
as  he  ought  to  know  him  until  by  faith  he 
became  loyal  to  him  and  became  a  mem- 
ber of  the  family.  The  preaching  that 
will  best  promote  holiness  is  that  preach- 
ing which  presents  the  Christ  in  all  his 
attractive  and  lovely  forms.  If  Christ  is 
presented  to  the  mind  and  heart  he  will 
himself  create  a  hunger  and  thirst  for 
righteousness.  "The  true  preaching  of 
the  Gospel  is  to  preach  Christ,  but  the 
fashion  of  the  day  has  been  instead  of 
this  to  attempt  to  convert  by  insisting  on 
conversion"  (Newman).    He  might  well 


Christian  Holiness  205 

have  added  that  the  way  to  secure  holi- 
ness is  to  preach  Christ  rather  than  to  in- 
sist upon  holiness.  Every  sermon  that 
exalts  the  Lord  Jesus  Christ  is  a  sermon 
for  the  promotion  of  holiness. 

By  a  life  of  faith  in  Christ  and  of  active 
service  for  him  the  Holy  Spirit  is  given 
opportunity  to  complete  the  work  begun 
in  regeneration.  If  in  regeneration  a  life 
is  imparted  holiness  is  secured  by  the 
growth  of  that  life,  whether  it  be  fast  or 
slow.  But  that  growth  is  not  at  all  iden- 
tical with  or  like  the  so-called  ''growth  in 
grace." 

3.  The  time  required. 

Life  is  measured  not  by  time,  but  by 
depth  and  intensity.  A  man  sometimes 
lives  more  in  five  minutes  than  in  the  five 
preceding  years. 

"We  live  in  deeds,  not  years;  in  thoughts,   not 

breaths ; 
In  feelings,  not  in  figures  on  a  dial. 
We  should  count  time  by  heart-throbs.     He  most 

lives 
Who  thinks  most,  feels  the  noblest,  acts  the  best." 
14 


206  Personal  Salvation 

Character  is  formed  not  by  time,  but 
by  strength  of  purpose  and  intensity  of 
thought  and  feeling.  So  much  depth  of 
purpose,  so  much  strength  and  intensity 
of  faith,  will  secure  the  reorganization 
and  reconstruction  of  the  soul  about  the 
Christ.  If  enough  knowledge  and  faith 
are  present  at  time  of  conversion  to  secure 
the  needed  pressure  the  work  can  be  com- 
pleted at  once,  or  in  five  minutes.  Or  it 
may  take  five  months  or  five  years.  It  is 
a  question  of  faith  and  consecration,  and 
not  of  time.  It  is  not  a  mechanical  work, 
but  a  living,  vital  process  wrought  out  by 
the  united  effort  of  the  man  and  the  Holy 
Spirit.  In  some  cases  the  work  is  done 
gradually,  in  others  suddenly.  In  either 
case  the  result  is  the  same.  A  definite 
quantity  of  water  will  slake  a  definite 
amount  of  lime.  If  the  water  is  all  put 
on  at  once  there  is  a  great  commotion  and 
the  work  is  done.  If  the  water  is  put  on 
a  drop  at  a  time,  or  if  the  lime  is  exposed 
to  the  moisture  of  the  air,  the  same  result 


Christian  Holiness  207 

will  be  accomplished,  but  a  much  longer 
time  is  required.  The  quicker  way,  how- 
ever, is  generally  the  better. 

Thus  at  some  time  before  death  the 
Christian  reaches  the  second  goal  of  the 
Qiristian  life.  He  has  not  exhausted  the 
riches  of  grace  nor  the  result  of  redemp- 
tion. The  center  of  his  life  has  been  fixed; 
in  God's  own  time  the  circumference  will 
also  be  definitely  drawn. 

The  most  serious  objection  that  has 
been  brought  against  holiness  as  a  "sec- 
ond" attainment  is  that  it  divides  Chris- 
tians into  classes.  If  this  objection  were 
valid  it  would  condemn  the  theory,  but 
where  a  division  exists  it  is  caused  not  by 
the  theory  but  the  ignorance  of  those  who 
hold  it  and  those  who  oppose  it.  The 
Christian  Church  is  a  family  with  chil- 
dren of  all  ages  and  all  stages  of  develop- 
ment. No  properly  governed  family  was 
ever  divided  by  the  attainments  of  any  of 
its  members.  The  Christian  community 
consists  of  some  who  are  in  process  of  en- 


208  Personal  Salvation 

lightenment  and  awakening,  and  some  of 
fixed  character  and  ripened  powers,  and 
of  others  in  all  the  intermediate  stages. 
They  stand  as  a  unit  about  the  Lord 
Jesus,  and  nothing  that  increases  love  and 
consecration  to  him  can  divide  the  family. 
The  doctrine  of  holiness  here  set  forth 
will  not  cause  division,  but  rather  be  a 
band  of  strength.  Anything  which  causes 
a  division  in  the  church  family  may  well 
be  looked  upon  witK  suspicion. 

Another  objects,  "Can  a  man  be  a 
Christian  and  at  the  same  time  be  un- 
holy?" That  depends  on  what  he  means 
by  the  word  "unholy."  If  he  means  that 
the  man's  life  is  still  unorganized,  and 
that  love  for  Christ  does  not  yet  at  every 
moment  reign  supreme,  then  the  man  is 
"unholy."  If  he  means  that  the  man  is 
wicked,  full  of  sin  and  rebellion  against 
God,  the  man  is  not  unholy.  He  is  a 
friend  of  God,  has  the  spirit  of  God 
within  him,  and  is  doing  his  best  to  please 
God.     A  building  in  the  process  of  con- 


Christian  Holiness  209 

struction  is  not  a  liouse,  neither  is  it  a  pile 
of  unrelated  lumber;  it  is  under  the  in- 
fluence of  a  guiding,  controlling  plan.  It 
will  be  a  house  when  it  is  done.  Why 
quarrel  about  words  when  the  facts  are  so 
apparent  and  simple  ? 

It  matters  not  by  what  name  it  is  called, 
there  is  an  experience  in  which  the  life 
becomes  fixed  about  the  Lord  Jesus  and  as 
a  result  love  reigns  supreme  and  all  mo- 
tives to  sin  disappear.  If  the  attempt  to 
explain  that  experience  is  not  satisfactory 
the  experience  itself  is. 

"Jesus,  thine  all-victorious  love 

Shed  in  my  heart  abroad : 
Then  shall  my  feet  no  longer  rove, 

Rooted  and  fixed  in  God. 

"O  that  in  me  the  sacred  fire 

Might  now  begin  to  glow, 
Burn  up  the  dross  of  base  desire 

And  make  the  mountains  flow ! 

"O  that  it  now  from  heaven  might  fall, 

And  all  my  sins  consume ! 
Come,  Holy  Ghost,  for  thee  I  call ; 

Spirit  of  burning,  come! 


210  Personal  Salvation 

•'Refining  fire,  go  through  my  heart; 
Illuminate  my  soul ; 
Scatter  thy  life  through  every  part, 
And  sanctify  the  whole. 

"My  steadfast  soul,  from  falling  free, 
Shall  then  no  longer  move, 

While  Christ  is  all  the  world  to  me, 
And  all  my  heart  is  love." 


Rescued  for  Service  211 


CHAPTER  XX 

Rescued  for  Service 

It  is  very  probable  that  there  are  some 
who  will  raise  the  objection  that  this 
treatment  of  redemption  pays  too  much 
attention  to  the  individual  and  not  enough 
to  society.  It  is  hard  for  one  man  to  see 
all  sides  of  the  truth,  and  especially  hard 
to  hold  facts  and  events  and  experiences 
in  their  proper  relation.  Very  recently 
The  Pilgrim's  Progress  was  severely 
criticised  because  of  its  personal  element, 
and  the  claim  was  made  that  it  fostered 
self-pride  and  self-consciousness  and  spir- 
itual narrowness.  The  same  authority 
has  also  assured  us  that  it  is  a  matter  of 
small  moment  whether  we  are  individual- 
ly virtuous  or  sinful.  Our  great  work  is 
"to  think  about  others."  It  is  well  to  re- 
member that  the  first   and   the  greatest 


212  Personal  Salvation 

service  which  a  man  can  render  his  fel- 
lows is  to  be  absolutely  clean  and  sound 
himself.  Personal  virtue  gives  to  service 
an  abiding  and  truly  helpful  quality  ut- 
terly unknown  to  the  mere  generosity 
which  always  thinks  of  others  first.  The 
man  who  decides  to  serve  men  as  a  healer 
of  disease  can  best  render  that  service, 
not  by  going  at  once  at  it,  but  by  first  giv- 
ing himself  long  years  of  personal  prepa- 
ration. For  many  years  he  works, 
training  and  developing  his  powers. 
Other  years  he  spends  in  directing  his 
trained  powers  to  the  study  of  medicine. 
He  can  best  serve  men  by  developing  him- 
self. So  the  Christian  rescue  begins  witH 
the  one  man.  The  individual  is  the  point 
of  attack  and  the  real  element  of  power. 
Christianity  prepares  men  for  the  highest 
and  noblest  and  completest  service  by  pre- 
paring the  man.  This  is  an  Individual 
task  which  it  is  folly  to  ignore.  The  first 
and  best  service  which  Bunyan's  Chris- 
tian could  render  to  the  City  of  Destruc- 


Rescued  for  Service  213 

tion  was  to  get  out  of  the  city  and  stay 
out.  Christianity  does  not  ignore  or 
behttle  the  importance  of  the  individual, 
but  forever  insists  on  personal  holiness. 
The  one  man  is  never  swallowed  up  in  the 
great  multitude  of  God's  family.  "He 
knoweth  his  sheep  by  name."  Each  man 
must  make  a  definite  personal  contribu- 
tion to  the  final  consummation,  and  his 
first  and  last  task  is  to  hold  fast  to  his 
individual  personality,  that  he  may  have 
somewhat  to  give. 

But,  while  Christianity  rescues  and  de- 
velops the  individual  as  though  he  were 
the  only  man,  it  rescues  and  develops  him 
for  the  kingdom  and  not  for  himself.  The 
personal  aim  is  to  prepare  a  perfect  Chris- 
tian character,  but  that  is  not  the  end. 
The  character  is  a  preparation  for  service. 
The  one  duty  of  the  Christian  is  to  serve 
God  and  man  with  all  his  ransomed  pow- 
ers. That  is  the  great  calling  whereunto 
we  are  called.  That  makes  us  like  God, 
who  thought  it  not  a  thing  to  be  prized  to 


214  Personal  Salvation 

sit  in  all  the  solitary  dignity  of  majestic 
and  eternal  holiness,  but  who  emptied 
himself,  pouring  out  all  his  powers,  into 
the  universe  and  upon  man  in  one  long 
and  perfect  service.  It  is  God's  delight  to 
give,  and  give,  and  give.  He  is  the  great 
Helper,  the  great  Servant,  the  great 
Burden  Bearer  of  the  universe.  The 
Christian  is  to  be  like  him,  holy  in  char- 
acter, as  a  preparation  for  service.  If 
there  were  absolutely  nothing  in  existence 
except  God  his  character  would  be  a  mat- 
ter of  small  consequence.  But,  since  God 
will  work  and  do  things,  since  he  made 
man  and  will  not  let  him  alone,  it  is  of 
the  greatest  importance  that  God  be  ab- 
solutely holy.  Just  so,  since  the  Christian 
is  a  member  of  society,  his  personal  virtue 
is  a  matter  of  the  greatest  Importance. 
Character  alone  makes  true  service. 
"Thus  the  personal  moral  process  is  com- 
pleted by  the  Christian  faith,  but  \vhen  It 
Is  completed  all  personal  isolation  has  dis- 
appeared.    The  one  individual  Is  saved, 


Rescued  for  Service  215 

but  not  alone;  he  is  saved  by  others,  and 
with  others,  and  for  others.  His  own  per- 
sonal life  is  perfected,  but  he  is  left  at  last 
in  vital,  self-sacrificing  relations  with  a 
mighty  organic  brotherhood/'  The  great 
law  of  life,  here  and  hereafter,  is  the  law 
of  service.  "A  Christian  is  God's  knight- 
errant  in  the  earth,  sworn  to  purity  in 
heart  and  purpose  and  to  fealty  to  society 
and  to  the  common  weal  of  all  the  world." 
The  Christian  religion  alone  furnishes 
the  power  and  the  motives  for  such  serv- 
ice. The  goal  of  the  individual  is 
service.  Service  is  also  the  goal  of  re- 
deemed society. 

"I  beheld,  and,  lo,  a  great  multitude,  which  no 
man  could  number,  of  all  nations,  and  kindreds, 
and  people,  and  tongues,  stood  before  the  throne, 
and  before  the  Lamb,  clothed  with  white  robes, 
and  palms  in  their  hands ;  and  cried  with  a  loud 
voice,  saying,  Salvation  to  our  God  which  sitteth 
upon  the  throne,  and  unto  the  Lamb.  .  .  .  And 
one  of  the  elders  answered,  saying  unto  me. 
What  are  these  which  are  arrayed  in  white  robes  ? 
and  whence  came  they?     And  I  said  unto  him, 


216  Personal  Salvation 

Sir,  thou  knowest.  And  he  said  to  me,  These  are 
they  which  came  out  of  great  tribulation,  and 
have  washed  their  robes,  and  made  them  white 
in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb.  Therefore  are  they 
before  the  throne  of  God,  and  serve  him  day  and 
night  in  his  temple." 


Date  Due 

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